a moment of dawn
by PreludeInZ
Summary: Heavenward was a story about John and EOS. Heavenward reaches its conclusion in its eighth and final part. This is the eighth part of Heavenward. It follows the horizon's child, and concludes the series.
1. prologue

The sunrise is distinct from the dawn.

The sunrise has a precise astronomical definition—the instant at which the upper edge of the sun crosses over the horizon. Astronomically, sunrise consists of only a single moment, that brief, fleeting intersection of the edge of the Earth and the edge of the sun.

The dawn has a variety of definitions, technical and colloquial. Civil, nautical and astronomical dawn are all different things, and measured formally, by degrees. Dawn is something that heralds the sunrise, and happens in the slow lightening of the sky with the advent of the new day; subtle, gradual change. Dawn is a span of time that changes from season to season, from place to place. Dawn takes only minutes at the equator, can stretch out into weeks at the poles.

Dawn is many things in many places. It's easy to lose hold of the meaning in the colloquialism, to blur the line between the dawn and the daybreak, and not to understand that one begets the other. If the dawn is a curve, a progression of change over time, then the sunrise is the point that marks its end. The break of day marks the last moment of dawn.

Sometimes, it seems like all we get is a moment.


	2. death and dying

The thing about broken hearts, is that John's was already broken.

Or breaking, anyway, if not yet broken past the point of adequate function.

It turns out that EOS was a stopgap, versus the sum total of things that would have killed John eventually, anyway.

It turns out that nearly three years spent in a physically demanding, unnatural environment, doing an intensely high-pressure job, stepping around the actual process of grieving a lost father, and instead stepping up to meet the extraordinary needs of an extraordinary family—it turns out that would take a certain toll on anyone's heart.

It turns out that being targeted, singled out and _ravaged_ by a forgotten, supposed-to-be-eradicated disease—having parasites tear through one's blood and one's brain and demand a rallied defense from a weakened and dormant immune system—that's the kind of thing that takes more than just two weeks of aggressive chloroquine treatment to recover from.

It turns out that, more even than pushing the limits of one's health, being subjected to the mental and emotional strain of trying and failing to make the case for a fundamental belief—trying and failing to save a life that no one believes actually _is_ a life—is the sort of thing that turns a person to desperation, nearly to despair. The sort of thing turns them away from their family and outward, alone into the world, in pursuit of the only possible person who might have been able to help, even if that person is supposed to be a dead man.

And it turns out that allowing three dubiously credentialed thugs in an anonymous back room to cut open one's chest and insert a pacemaker; to thread leads through one's arteries and into the heart—is the sort of choice that results in a build up of scar tissue in atrium and ventricle, in slowly blossoming infection, and a breakdown of essential functions, and it poisons one's heart from the inside out.

And maybe EOS' presence was killing him, but it's in the immediacy of her absence that he's dying. And though John's is the sort of mind that's always had a good grasp of causality, in a state like this, it's hard to tell the difference between being killed and just dying. And between dying and wanting to die.

The truth is that it's finally too much. For so many reasons—reasons of exhaustion and ill health and trauma and just basic, binary function—John's just not capable of sustaining this kind of grief; the immediacy of this loss. Even as her last words ring in his ears, and he knows them for the last thing he'll ever hear her say; John's heart is what fails him. Stress and adrenaline and the exertion of high emotion send his heartbeat rocketing into a state of tachycardia. The fall of darkness is sudden as always, but for the first time, it's not unwelcome. If there's any fractured part of him left still capable of hope; then John hopes that it lasts beyond the bounds of his ability to feel.

* * *

If he'd woken in his father's arms, then he would have died. If his father had been the one to come for him, then it would only have been right; would only have been _fair_ —for his father to feel a fraction of the loss he's caused his son. For Jeff to have to beg and plead with him, at the edge of his own oblivion, on the cusp of following his own reason for existence into the dark—

It would have just been right. And if John's heart has broken, then it's not the only part of him that's done so; and he'd have denied his father, and given up, then and there, to teach Jefferson Tracy a lesson that he should've learned, long, long ago. If it had been his father, John would have let go of the edge, and fallen off into the dark, and gone where he wasn't supposed to follow.

But it's not his father, because it's Alan.

Because in the end, it's always Alan. If John's in trouble, then it's going to be Alan who comes. That's Alan's job, after all.

The part of his brain responsible for causality doesn't question why Alan's here; how Alan even _can_ be here. There's nothing about Alan's presence that doesn't make sense, because somehow Alan's always seemed to know when John needs help, and what to do about it. Certainly better than John ever has. How he'd known where to find his brother isn't even that difficult a question, because John's just where he always is; where he's _supposed_ to be—aboard Thunderbird Five.

Or, it looks like Thunderbird Five, anyway. Something about that conclusion seems wrong, but he can't quite seem to pull his thoughts together enough to determine just what.

Maybe Alan can help.

Maybe Alan will know what to do about the crushing, unbearable pain in the center of his chest; the pressure that seems to be squeezing the air from his lungs, that leaves him with nothing left to put towards words, if he even had any idea of what he's supposed to say.

Alan's pulled him up off the floor, away from the curving arc of the gravity ring. Alan's got an arm wrapped around John's back and a hand clenched against his his shoulder. Alan's eyes are wet and his nose is red and his fingertips are fumbling at the side of John's helmet, the left side, near his jaw, where the external controls for his radio are. There's a hiss and a crackle of static, a soft whine of feedback as Alan gets them both on the same frequency.

"—ohn? Can you hear me? Just hold on, John. You've gotta hang on a little longer for me, okay?"

He doesn't want to. Even if it _is_ Alan asking, John wants to ask why he should, or how he's supposed to, or what could possibly left for him to hold on to. There's numbness spreading to his fingertips, down from his left shoulder and across to his collarbone, tightening sharply across his chest. Everything hurts and he's so desperately tired; he feels hollowed out and weighed down all at once, and the oxygen he can't spare for words isn't quite making it to his brain, either. He doesn't understand what's happening, only that it's the worst thing that's happened to him in his entire life.

The edges of that thought represent a agonizing reality, and the truth of it is sharp enough to start to sever the ties that are keeping him here, biting keen and sharp and painful, trying to cut him free.

But, it's Alan.

And Alan's here and Alan's real and Alan's got tears streaking the inside of his helmet's faceplate, and John can feel his little brother's hand gripping his shoulder, even through the numbness, something holding on to _him_. There's a knock of perspex against perspex, and when John blinks his eyes open again, he realizes his little brother's bowed his head, pulled him closer than before. There's still a comm channel between them, but it feels like Alan's voice is right in his ear, tearful as he says, "Johnny, _please_. C'mon, I-I told her you weren't gonna die. John, let's go home. Just _come home_ , John, _please_ , I just want you to come home. Please, stay with me. Please, _please_ , don't go."

There's something weirdly familiar about the things Alan's saying. It's almost like he's said them before, though John can't remember when or where. They seem like the sorts of thing John's said himself, not all that long ago, though he's fading out and it's hard to remember anything. Especially when some deep part of him knows he doesn't want to; that all he _wants_ to do is let go, fall away, and forget.

Still. It's Alan. And his voice sparks off something in the depths of John's soul, reminds him of something he'd all but forgotten. So though it costs an enormous amount of effort, far more than it should, John manages to lift a hand to clasp his little brother's shoulder, just before everything falls away again.

If there's a line between John Tracy, death and dying, it might just be that Alan's it.


	3. sudden dread, deja vu

John hasn't had a heart attack.

He's in an acute state of some kind of tachyarrhythmic cardiac _something_ , and though the biometrics on the slate gray spacesuit aren't nearly of the caliber Alan's used to, he knows enough about what he's looking at to know that his brother hasn't had a heart attack.

It's not enough to say that he _won_ _'t_ , though. And right now it doesn't look good.

A long ago version of Alan had a very different version of this encounter in his head. Finally finding his brother—tracking John down and hemming him in and pinning him in place—and just scorching the earth where he stood with pure, righteous fury. Getting angry, because not-actually-all-that-long-ago-Alan had been pretty sure that by this point he'd be entitled to be angry with his brother. For being stubborn and solitary and obsessive and sociopathic, for disregarding his health and his safety and his family and _international law_ , and just throwing himself off a cliff's edge, in pursuit of a lost cause.

Only, Alan hadn't ever stopped to consider what would actually happen, if John were to lose this cause.

It turns out it looks a lot like falling off an edge.

 _Actually_ finding his brother—at first, Alan had been sure he'd found him too late. That it had been like EOS had said; that John just hadn't been able to go on without her, that he'd given up completely. EOS had warned him that there was something wrong with John's heart. It's possible that Alan hadn't fully understood just how imminent that threat could be, until he'd gotten aboard the station, down into the gravity ring. The first thing he'd seen had been John, crumpled lifelessly onto his side, held in place by the inertial pull of centrifugal force—but all alone and empty and so terribly still. There'd been a shock of sudden dread, deja vu, and Alan had gone skidding to his knees at John's side, babbling his brother's name, before he'd realized that—alive or dead—of course John couldn't hear him, their comms on separate channels.

But he hadn't been dead.

And he isn't dead yet.

So he's absolutely not _going_ to die on Alan's watch, because John's is the life Alan's promised to save.

Okay.

Brake the gravity ring. No reason for this to be harder than it already is. Get John up, even if his limbs are limp and resistant and heavy; even in zero-g. Keep talking to him, babbled, vaguely positive nonsense, even if the only answer is his shallow, laboured breathing. Go quickly, it isn't far, and every second counts. Get to the aftward airlock, where there's a small shuttle docked, and air and heat and light and a space-rated emergency med kit, and Jefferson Grant Tracy, who surely hasn't come back from the dead just to watch one of his boys die.

Open the hatch.

The first time he sees his father in nearly three years, and Alan's first words to him, thumbing on an external audio channel, are a clipped, stern, " _Move_ , Dad."

Because his Dad's in the way, waiting right up at the inner door of the airlock, and Alan—and John, more critically—doesn't have the time for blank, staring shock; wide, grey-blue eyes and hands that reach for his son, even as he moves backward, gets out of the way. If his father says anything, Alan's still got his helmet on, can't hear him.

Nothing he could say right now would be helpful, anyway. Right now his father is a resource, and is only useful if he does what he's told.

Everyone in the family credits Alan's obsession with video games as a mark of his obsession with hand-eye coordination, a means of honing his reflexes and tightening his reaction time, staying sharp. It's the general consensus that Alan's good at games for the same reason he's a good pilot—and that those same skills are what he develops while he plays, and are what he values most.

This isn't untrue, but it's also not the whole of the truth.

Because what Alan values most is the learned ability to detach his self from his actions; to step backwards, out of himself, and render the world around him in terms of objectives and obstacles, goals and parameters, and how they relate to the avatar of Thunderbird 3. Shouldering past his long-lost father to haul his dying older brother into the cabin of the little shuttle—not the sort of action he can really be present in the moment for. Something he needs to be separate from, or else risk breaking down entirely. Alan's aware that his eyes are still slightly blurred with tears, but the emotion attached to them is gone, put aside for later.

Okay.

Get John over to the co-pilot's seat, secure him. Pop his helmet open and pull it off—don't be distracted by the way his face is wet and his eyes are red-rimmed against ashy, pale skin; the way he looks _awful_ , so far from how he's supposed to be—and find a pulse, because he _has_ to still have one, and—"Dad, gimme the—oh, good, thanks. Standby." Crack open a space-rated standard medkit. Oxygen and an AED. Remember the dozens, probably more like hundreds of times Gordon's done this demo, because it's always easiest to remember the way Gordon does it, which is why Gordon's done it a few hundred times.

Which, in turn, is why Alan can do it without thinking or feeling, making sure that the oxygen mask is tight but not too tight, 40% concentration, seal is good, valves are all clear. Pulling John's spacesuit open, unzipping it from the collar down to expose his chest—not getting distracted by the horrorshow of a scar that mars the hollow below his collarbone, or the hard, evident edges of the device beneath his skin. Letting his fingers linger only briefly on the IR logo on the opposite side, a tattoo plainly inked against his brother's skin, before using it as a guide for where to place the rightward pad of the defibrillator, and then the other lower down on the left side, against the curve of John's ribcage. His brother still isn't even vaguely conscious, but maybe that's a mercy.

There's not a hell of a lot more Alan can do. And so far all his dad's done is _watch_.

There's really no time for this.

Alan pulls his own helmet off and turns, addresses his father, his tone still clipped and brisk and short, "I've gotta open TB3's cargo bay, this thing can't de-orbit fast enough on its own and we need to get to a hospital."

His father continues to be useless, staring and helpless and apparently not listening as he pulls himself over to the other side of the co-pilot's seat. He doesn't seem to know what to do expect press a hand against John's chest, over his heart, maybe feeling for the same pulse Alan had been after.

But Alan took care of that already. If there's anything to be done about John's heart, there's a device in place that'll do it, that's taken care of, that's handled. Alan's already pulling up the remote controls for the cargo bay on his wrist control, keying in access-codes, rapid fire. They need to move forward, and Alan doesn't look up as he asks, "Can you bring her in and dock? I can do it if you—"

Jeff's voice breaks slightly as he says, "Allie, your _brother_ —"

There's a version of Alan that's not immediately annoyed, irritated with this stricken old man for looking so obviously frightened, for not achieving the same level of detachment that Alan has to force his way through—but it's not the version of Alan that's present, here and now. He feels his back teeth grind together and snaps, "I'll do it."

He shifts himself away and into the pilot's seat, takes in the controls at a glance and then reaches up to flick a few switches, disengage the airlock before switching to full manual control. As an afterthought he says—"Don't touch him. If that thing says he needs a shock, you _can't_ be touching him. That's what 'clear' means."

"...I know that, Alan, I—"

"Hold on."

Disengage the docking mechanism. Get clear of the station overhead. Fire up the maneuvering thrusters, make a quick, careful beeline over to TB3 and the gleaming white sanctuary of the cargo bay. Take a minute to be thankful for how nimble and responsive the little shuttle is. Tuck it up inside his Thunderbird's massive interior, and lock securely onto the docking mechanisms. Don't be distracted by the way John stirs and groans in response to the sudden jerk of movement, or what Jeff says to him, low and soft, with one hand on his son's arm and the other brushing through his hair, his head bowed close.

That's fine. Someone needs to look after John. Alan can't do it, and plainly his father isn't going to be good for much else. If he were alone he'd take John with him up to TB3's cockpit, but with his father here there's no need. Better not to move John more than necessary. "You got him, Dad? I gotta go."

"I—yes. I've got him, Alan, I—"

"I have to go. Strap in, reentry's gonna be rough."

Leave. Get out of the shuttle, get up to the access hatch for the cockpit. Dad's here. Dad's back and John's back and Dad's got John, so it's fine. John's not going to die, because he just _can't_ —but if he does, he won't be alone, because Dad's here. Dad's got him. John's in really bad shape, but it's okay, because at least their Dad is here. Alan can go, Alan still has a job to do. Everything Alan's done so far is a stopgap, because John needs _real_ help. _Badly_. Get John to a hospital and a doctor and to people who can do more for him than Alan can. Get John some help. Take John _home_.

Stop _crying_.

He has, mostly, by the time he gets up to his control panel. He's had to ditch his helmet so he can wipe his eyes and cough and pull h imself together. He has to clear his throat and take a deep breath and try and someone up Thunderbird 3's essential steadiness, even as he brings his ship around, and starts to set a course. He knows where he's going. There's only one hospital in the world that can handle Thunderbird 3, only one hospital rated for emergency medical situations, straight out of orbit. John's even been there before. They'll probably remember him. Malaria's pretty memorable, after all.

Only one thing left to do.

Call the island.


	4. bolt from the blue

Alan's call comes in not even fifteen minutes after EOS' does.

Scott's sat back down at their father's desk, a little bit numb, a little bit bewildered, more than a little bit frightened. He's only been able to play the message back once. He doesn't think he can stand to hear it a third time. Something about it sends a sick, nauseous chill through the heart of him, the paralysis of pure dread. Something about the finality of it, how unambiguous her choice of words had been— _Harm has come to John_.

Everything else she'd said seems like it pales in comparison to that, the only thing Scott keeps hearing, playing back in his head.

Something's happened to his brother. He's out in the world somewhere, and something's gone wrong, and for everything EOS _had_ said, she _hadn_ _'t_ said anything about where to find him, or how to help him, or just what the hell was wrong. Her cryptic message had been almost worse than knowing nothing at all, because now Scott _knows_ that something's happened, but doesn't know what to do about it.

And it's just the same problem they've had ever since the whole ordeal started. No one _knows_ what John's been doing. There's been no word of him, nothing to go on, only educated guesses and assumptions. But today had already had the feeling of something coming to an end, of pieces falling into place. Today Scott had heard his brother's voice for the first time in over a month, and he'd sounded—he _hadn_ _'t_ sounded as though anything like harm had come to him. He'd sounded tired, maybe, a little bit furtive and fractured, but not like he'd been hurt at all, or like he expected to be.

That wasn't even eight hours ago. Something's happened since then, something's changed.

And now Alan's calling, but it takes Scott a minute to click back into himself, to bottle up the heartache and worry and fear and step back up to the matter at hand. He opens the channel and his little brother's hologram flares to life from the comm at the center of the desk. "Thunderbird 3," he says, automatically acknowledging his little brother, though he still feels weird and disconnected as he focuses on Alan, waits for him to go ahead.

Except—

Something about Alan's changed, too.

He doesn't know exactly what, but it's immediately apparent, and it's real and arresting and freezes Scott where he sits. Alan's changed once before, and now he's changed again, and Scott doesn't know if he likes it. Alan's eyes are bright and his jaw is set and he's just—different. Casting about for some sort of label to apply to the way he's changed, Scott seems to stumble across the idea that something's missing, somehow.

And—

"I found John."

There's no preamble, nothing to soften the news. Alan just _says it_ , just drops it into the call like John hasn't been missing for a solid month. It's supposed to be relief that comes flooding into Scott now, it's supposed to loosen the tautness in his chest and lighten the weight on his shoulders—this is the news Scott's been _waiting_ for, today of all days. But something about the statement seems incomplete, leaves Scott hanging.

Alan continues—

"And John found Dad. Dad's alive and John found him."

There's no way in the world Scott could've been ready for that one.

And it hits like a strike of lightning, a bolt from the blue moment of clarity that explains _everything_.

 _That_ _'s_ what John's been doing.

That's what would be worth tearing himself out of the family for, worth throwing everything away. That's why he went after EOS—he must have needed her, must have believed she was the key to finding their father. That _has_ to be it. It's been three years since they lost their Dad and Scott knows it better than anyone else—that John just never came to terms with that, never found his way to anything like closure. The prospect of losing EOS must have been what set him off—he'd _said_ , not even that long ago, that he couldn't face up to that kind of grief again. No wonder he'd decided to do this. John's always had that sort of brilliant efficiency about him, it had just been two birds with one stone. John had to save EOS in order to find out what had happened to their father.

It makes so much sense.

It's also entirely the wrong conclusion.

—or, anyway, Scott's got the causality of it backwards—but it still hits him in the chest like that same lightning strike, a bolt of pure white fire, straight from heaven. Scorches away every last scrap of fear and doubt, redeems his faltering faith in his brother, and fills him to the brim with the purpose that's been missing, the _reason_ for it all. His brother hasn't lost his mind, his brother's _found their father_.

It's enough to pull Scott to his feet, to snap him out of that haze and into reality again, into a world that he wants to inhabit, where his father's alive and his brother's coming home, a past and future he'd never expected to intersect.

"Thunderbird 3, say again?" he demands, but crisp this time, clear and right and with his heart beating the way it's meant to, with surety and certainty and _hope_.

" _John found Dad_. Dad's alive and John found him, and I've got them, I've got them both, but Scott—"

Scott's not listening as Alan's voice breaks off, not listening as he pulls up TB3's location, its flight path and its status. There's a vessel in the cargobay, two life signs aboard. Alan's still different, but Scott doesn't care. The change that's come over Alan is secondary to the change that's come over the world at large, where the fundamental truth of his father's absence has reversed polarity, and Jefferson Tracy is alive again. Nothing else could possibly matter in a world where that's true.

Or so he thinks, anyway, right up until Alan finds his voice again. When he speaks, Scott realizes what's changed, the way his little brother's gone all grim, hardened and taut and with all of the emotion purged out of him as he says, "Scott, John's dying."

This doesn't hit Scott quite the way it should either.

Because that can't be right. He wouldn't _dare_. There's no way in the world that could be true, John can't be—after _everything_. Everything he's done, everything he's put them through, and everything he's been through himself—there's no way John's dying. John's just found their father. There's no way John's not going to make it home. Scott's not going to stand for it. The tenor of the situation shifts and it's once again a question of what Scott's wanted to do all along—just to save his brother, whether he wants saving or not. So, brisk, in Thunderbird 1's voice, "What's his status, Thunderbird 3?"

Scott can see the tension in his little brother, the way his whole body's become an extension of his bird, the way he's still got that curious air of detachment about him, and his voice doesn't waver as he answers the question, "Cardiac distress. _Severe_ cardiac distress. Dad's got him, but he needs a hospital; we're going to Zurich. I've gotta call it in, I can't stay on the line."

It's the only hospital in the world that can handle a ship the size of TB3 and Scott's already doing the mental calculation for how long it'll take him to get there from the island, at speed. Not much more than an hour. And he can do more than just that, as he gives the order, "Burn hard out of orbit, I'll call and coordinate clearance for your landing, make sure they're expecting you."

Alan gives a curt nod in answer. "Right. Right, okay. ETA's about twelve minutes."

"FAB, Alan. I'll be there as soon as I can."

The call drops without a further word, but Scott's been galvanized and he's already running for the opposite wall, mentally preparing himself for launch, mentally queuing up calls to Virgil, to Kayo and Gordon. TB1's been fueled up and ready ever since he'd first gotten back to the island, though that seems like ages ago now; part of a lifetime that falls on the other side of a newly drawn line.

His dad is alive.

His dad is _alive_ and Alan's with him and they've got John.

And John's not dying. Scott doesn't care what Alan says, cardiac distress or not, it's just not going to happen. The part of him that's sparked and caught fire and gotten caught up in that firestorm of hope is thinking about how things had gone the _last_ time John had been dying, and how it's going to be okay, because it just _has_ to be. John's going to be fine. Scott refuses to believe that the world where he gets his father back is a world cruel enough to take his brother's life in trade. It's not going to happen.

His back hits the wall and his hands are reaching upward, before Scott's heart catches up with his brain and he remembers something he's forgotten, something massively, _vitally_ important. Something for which he can spare the time. He shoves himself away from the wall and bolts for the stairs up into the villa proper, makes straight for his grandmother's bedroom.


	5. a hurricane in his wake

Grandma's not a light sleeper, exactly, but going to bed before the sun's even gone down seems to lead to waking up before the sun rises. While it's still too dark to get up, these days she stays in bed, stays alone with her thoughts and her fears, and lets the morning clamour of the house grow quiet in the villa below her, before she'll get herself up and find a reason to move through the day.

Her room in the villa breaks from the aesthetic of the rest of the place. The foundations are all still angular, hard surfaces and clean, modern lines—but she's aggressively conquered the rest of the space with tchotchkes and kitsch and framed photos on actual photo paper, of her children, her grandsons, and her own family. She has her dresser and her vanity and a real and genuine La-Z-Boy, no Herman Miller in sight.

A four poster bed fills the center of the room, and she's piled this high with quilts and throw pillows, and buried her tired old body deep beneath them

Her room faces eastward, and it's only just dawn, and she hears Scott outside her door before he opens it.

Her hearing isn't what it used to be, but Scott's voice is loud and she catches the tail end of what he's saying, even as the door to her room swings open and light from the hallway floods an angular path across the carpet. "—your scanners might not track him. I've forward the access data for his flight path, be advised he'll be burning hard out of orbit. He doesn't need much room to put down, but you'll want all non-essential personnel clear of the runway. Thank you, Zurich. Thunderbird One, out."

It's possible that there's a part of her that's been waiting for the day that one of the boys has news worth waking her for. The part of her that's been going to bed at seven-thirty and lying awake in the dark in the mornings isn't hopeful. As a last line of defense, she squeezes her eyes tightly shut and pulls her blankets just that little bit closer.

So she doesn't see her grandson's shadow cut across the shaft of light from the hallway, but she hears the click of the switch as he reaches out and turns on every light in the room. Grandma shivers beneath the blankets, wants to give in to the urge to burrow deeper and retreat away from whatever Scott has to tell her, because it can't possibly be good news.

Scott's steps across the carpeted floor are quick and she's startled when she hears his knees hit the ground at her bedside, the way his hand reaches out and closes around her wrist. The note of command that had been present in his voice only a moment ago has vanished, and his voice is oddly hushed, as he says, "Grandma?"

This is the part where he tells her that her grandson is gone. Just the same as he'd been the one to tell her that her son—his father—had crashed a jet into the North Atlantic, and that they were going to do everything they could, but that he didn't think they were going to find him alive. The delivery of this news falls to the eldest, the way the worst things always do.

She takes a deep breath and turns her head, opens her eyes to meet Scott's, and braces for the news she's been dreading.

And it doesn't come.

Or at least, it's not what he leads with.

* * *

Two Thunderbirds, heading towards each other at disparate speeds, communicate information regarding a mutual destination at UTC0623h. If Thunderbird 1 travels at 15,434 mph and Thunderbird 2 travels at 4603 mph, at what time will they be able to match position for intercept, for a midair transfer of the pilot of the slower craft onto the faster? At what coordinates? Assuming a smooth transfer rate of ~t:00:02:30, at what point will they reach their destination, at 47°31'46.9"N 8°32'00.3"E?

It's easier to try and do the math in his head than it is to try and apprehend the reality Scott's proposing.

Dad's alive. John's dying. Alan's got them both, and will be landing _at_ 47°31'46.9"N 8°32'00.3"E, sometime in the next three minutes. Scott's still trying to get ahold of Kayo and Gordon, who've been comm-dark in Bangkok ever since they left to go after Penelope. The coordinates stated represent the GDF's Space Medicine Facility, outside Zurich. Only makes sense, it's the only medical facility in the world equipped to handle a ship the size of TB3. Virgil's never been, but Scott has, and so has John.

Virgil's having the weirdest sensation of deja vu. If Scott's heading to Zurich because John's dying, then Alan and Gordon should be here, nerves worn raw and and the both of them fraught with tension, sniping at each other. There should be a hurricane in his wake, not a flood.

But if this has happened before, then this time isn't like last time, because this time he's alone. And he feels caught up in the onslaught of _some_ sort of storm, something massive and more powerful than he is, something slow and inexorable, but still drawing him ever onward. A hurricane sounds about right, only the calm at the center isn't really calm, but a sort of hazy numbness.

He wonders how Grandma's holding up aboard Thunderbird 1, at speed. Mach 20 isn't anything to sneeze at, and their grandmother is _eighty-five_. What the hell Scott's _thinking_ —

Only, it's obvious there's only one thing Scott could possibly be thinking; that their dad and their brother are both somewhere he can reach, and the only person in the entire world who could want to see Jefferson Tracy more than his eldest boy is his mother.

There'd be no holding her back, anyway, she'd take TB1 herself if it came to it. The absurdity of the thought of his grandmother at the helm of Thunderbird 1 cracks a grin across his face, but its in the same moment that he realizes his eyes are stinging. Their grandmother's eighty-five, and she shouldn't have to be there if one of her grandsons is going to die. They should keep her well away from that. He doesn't know what the hell Scott's thinking.

He's on an intercept course, automatically calculated. He doesn't _need_ to do the math, his 'bird does it for him, in tandem with Scott's. Thunderbirds have brains of silicon and iridium and they talk to each other over spans of thousands of miles, telepathic. His telemetry's already taken care of, it's in better hands than his; being thought through by a better _brain_ than his is, right at the moment. Minute course corrections and adjustments of speed and altitude, there's a pre-coded flightpath for scenarios like this. Virgil doesn't need to keep butting his head against these numbers, trying to solve a problem that doesn't need solving.

But it's better than trying to think his way through the alternative.

Dad's alive. John's dying.

Virgil has fourteen and a half hours worth of reasons not to be able to get his head around that right now. He's been in the air for over half that time, but he's spent the other half of it down in the muck and the mire of inland flooding, helping with evac. He's cold and filthy and exhausted and his usual copilot is in Bangkok somewhere, so there's no one to spell him off. He and Scott had been in Madagascar for six hours before Scott had broken off, and Virgil had remained, dutiful, at the GDF's beck and call, because that relationship is important. That relationship is _especially_ important if his big brother is a fugitive from international law, in violation of whatever statutes exist surrounding complex AI. IR needs to stay in the GDF's good books. That's important. He'd known what he was doing was important, so he'd done it, no complaints. They'd even thanked him when he'd gotten done.

Speed: 4593 mph vs 15,420 mph. Heading straight towards each other. He should be able to work this out.

God, but he's tired. He should call the island, he should let Brains take over.

He's going to need to hand remote control over to Brains eventually anyway, to get TB2 the rest of the way back home. It's a good thing they haven't heard back from Kayo, because she'd have a conniption fit at the notion of Virgil, bailing out of TB2 in midair and letting it fly back to the island unmanned. Still, it's an extraordinary circumstance, and it's not like Kayo's around to stop them. He should hand off now, he should get ready to make the move from his 'bird over to Scott's. He's going to need his head on straight, he's going to need to be able to concentrate.

It's just there's a big ugly fact that keeps cropping up in the middle of his brain, and Virgil just can't seem to keep himself from crashing into it, even if it makes his chest seize up and his heart start pounding, makes him sick and dizzy with dread.

The fact that Dad's alive seems secondary to the fact that John's dying.

What does that even mean, anyway, that John's dying. Why don't they have more information than that, that's a hell of a thing for Scott just to _say_ and to expect him to be able to cope with. How _can_ John be dying when they'd _finally_ heard from him, not even eight hours ago? He was fine, then. He'd seemed fine. Virgil's played that call back, four, five times now. It had almost been reassuring.

It's starting to seem like getting his ass aboard TB1 is the only way he's gonna get any answers.

Getting his ass aboard aboard TB1 means getting his ass _off_ of TB2, midflight, at thirty-thousand feet.

That's the sort of harebrained, hair raising maneuver that they've practiced a handful of times. He _can_ do it, because he's done it before, but he usually doesn't do it running on fumes and with his father's resurrection competing with his brother's imminent death for the forefront of his weary, worn-out brain.

But it has to be done. And Virgil can do it, if it has to be done.

Still.

This is gonna suck.


	6. the long fall to earth

It's a long fall to Earth.

It's not supposed to be the fall that kills you, but then, most people aren't already dying on the way down.

John's been falling for years; it's just possible that John's fallen longer and further and faster, cumulatively, than most anyone else in the world. Nearly a thousand straight days in orbital freefall, when most everyone else who lives and works in low earth orbit is prohibited from such a timespan by regulations concerning health and safety and sanity.

Nearly a thousand days, and so many more dawns than that; so many dawns that the notion of day had lost all meaning.

John's falling again, but a little more deliberately this time and not of his own accord. Thunderbird 3 burns earthward, trails an arc of ionizing fire across the heavens as it does. From low-earth orbit, Thunderbird 3 will take twelve minutes to reach airspace above the GDF Space Medicine Facility, outside Zurich in Switzerland.

John's vaguely aware of where he is. He's sitting in her shuttle, and her shuttle's been docked inside of Thunderbird 3's gleaming white cargo bay. He's aware that Alan had been with him before, that his father's beside him now, and that there's oxygen being fed to his lungs, a pair of defibrillator pads stuck to his chest, electrodes to sense any fatal change in the rhythm of his failing heart. Neither Alan nor his father want him to die, and both of them have said so—his father's _still_ saying so, as though anything he could say would matter. His father doesn't have the power over life and death that John had once believed he did, or at least, not in the direction he had hoped. His father is no small part of the reason EOS is gone. If John weren't actively dying, he might even be able to bring himself to blame Jeff Tracy for everything he's lost.

Of course, it's not as though his father doesn't blame himself already.

If John were listening, he'd even hear his father say so, though it's not as though it could possibly make a difference. Nothing his father says is going to change the fact that his son is dying.

John wonders if it'll be day or night when he dies, what moment they'll chose to assign to the hour, the minute of his death. Time's a funny thing in orbit, because it's not defined by the turn of the Earth, and can only ever be what time you decide it is. Thunderbird 5's appointed timezone could have been the same as Tracy Island's, but John prefers UTC, because it's just the standard in orbit. He can't remember what time Alan keeps aboard Thunderbird 3. There might be a part of him that's sorry for the fact that he's going to die aboard his brother's ship, but the greater part of him is too busy dying to care.

It doesn't really matter. None of it mattered.

He's failed her, and she's gone.

She didn't die, but she's still gone.

She's gone and so he's going to die, because what else can he do, without her?

And it's not like he believes in an afterlife, but even if he did, it's not like she could be there. Even if _there_ were an afterlife—some heaven or hell or purgatory awaiting whatever passes for a human soul—his would be a place without her in it. It's a fundamental truth of EOS that she existed only within the confines of her system. The totality of _her_ was never anything more than a symphony of code, and its expression was—the same as his, ultimately—never anything more than an infinitely complex series of electrical impulses. A binary of ones and zeroes, states of quantum computation, but ultimately, nothing really all that different from what works in his own brain. If there's any ambiguity about the persistence of the human soul beyond the bounds of death, there's none about her. Her existence was quantifiable, finite. A life created is a life defined, and for whatever John may have believed about the nature of her self and her soul and her obvious, demonstrable personhood, the truth is simply that she's gone.

And without her, John's not sure what there is worth living for.

* * *

Death is distinct from dying.

Death has a variety of definitions, medical, colloquial and legal. Even medically, clinical death, brain death, and a death declared are all different things, and are quantifiable, measured formally and by degrees. The act of dying isn't always something that results in a death, but then, one doesn't have to be dying to die.

Life and death represent a binary. Dying represents a spectrum.

Jefferson Tracy was declared legally dead six months to the day after his disappearance, but this had little to no impact upon his survival. EOS was never alive and therefore hasn't died, though death is the only analogue that seems enough to humanize her loss. John Tracy is dying, but it seems as though he's been dying for a very long time and just can't quite seem to nail down the trick of it.

When he starts to die the first time, it's just as they break atmo. It falls to John's father to save him, but really his father has very little to do with it. All his father does is press a button.

An AED is an automated external defibrillator. It's a computerized device designed to detect abnormal cardiac rhythms that can be corrected via defibrillation, and to direct an operator to administer a shock. It can't be done automatically without risk to the user or other bystanders, it requires an operator's intervention, but beyond that, its function is independent.

The computer that orders the function of the device is not an especially clever one. It's certainly nothing on the order of an Artificial Intelligence, it's certainly nothing more complex than a basic system, meant to read and identify electrical signals from the heart and to engage its primary function, when these can be corrected. John's heart trips and stumbles out of a sustainable rhythm and into the chaotic failure of ventricular fibrillation, the AED detects this, charges, and instructs the operator to ensure that all parties are clear, and then to administer a shock. All it takes is the touch of a button.

John doesn't know it, and won't for a long time, but his father's is the smaller part of what saves his life, the first time. In the end, really, it's down to the simple binary of a simple computer, to make the difference between John Tracy's life and death.

There's a part of him that would have been glad of that.

* * *

The second time he starts to die, his life is saved by someone who owes him her own.

She'd wanted to mention the WWSS incident the first time John Tracy had happened into her sphere, only the problem with her sphere is that it's generally occupied by people who are ill or injured or dying or otherwise in distress. When she'd met John Tracy, the first time around, he'd been in a coma. So, not really the opportune moment. But then, she'd met his elder brother too, and had _wanted_ to say "Hey, one time you guys saved my life and it was amazing"—but it had been the wrong moment for that, too. Failing gratitude, she'd wanted to have the words to say something meaningful or comforting about how John was going to get the best care available—but it had seemed trite and obvious. She can't remember what she'd told him instead, but does remember that she'd pulled some strings and gotten him into the exam room, to have a few minutes alone with his brother that he might not have gotten otherwise. And she had hoped that the gesture had gone farther than anything she might have said, because she's never really been that good with words.

Dr. Abigail Dyson, formerly a medical officer aboard the World Wide Space Station, and unlucky enough to have been aboard when its orbit was compromised by a self-sustaining gravity well out of the Quantum Research Center in Geneva. She likes to make the joke that after reassignment from the damaged station, it's a funny coincidence that she'd managed to land in Switzerland anyway. She's a diligent physician and competent officer and the GDF Space Medicine Facility is lucky to have her.

John Tracy is lucky that she's in the room the second time he starts to crash. He's lucky that she's good at her job, and lucky that she remembers him from the last time he was here and takes it personally that he would turn up in her ER a second time, and in such dire straits. Lucky that she has absolutely no intention of being the person who fails to save a member of International Rescue, because surely if anyone in the world has earned a little saving, it's gotta be Thunderbird Five. Lucky that she owes him her life, at least in part.

Maybe it's not luck, strictly speaking. It certainly can't be anything as mundane as coincidence. Maybe it's something more like karma, because the karmic debt owed to one John Glenn Tracy has to be _massive_. Dr. Dyson wonders if John keeps a running tally of "lives saved" somewhere aboard Thunderbird 5. But then, it's not like _she_ does. Their jobs are different, but they're both fundamentally in the lifesaving business. Her metrics are probably a little bit disproportionate, anyway. All the little minor acts that add up to keeping people alive and well and healthy have to total up a lot more slowly than the grand, impressive feats performed by International Rescue, but she likes to hope that they're at least on the same playing field, if obviously in different echelons.

As gestures go, the act of bullying his heart back into behaving itself is at least a little more tangible. That's definitely score one for Dr. Abigail Dyson, as far as lives saved are considered, the only time she thinks she's actually gone to the trouble of counting. At least it evens the score, between her and John Tracy.

She hopes that this time around she gets the chance to thank him personally.

* * *

John's awfully hard to kill, for someone who wants to die.

He won't even get a third chance at it, because he's found his way into excellent hands, and the GDF Space Medicine Corps are particularly stubborn about not losing astronauts, especially astronauts who have the nerve to turn up twice in the span of only a few months, and the audacity to be dying on both occasions.

The facility at large is mostly meant to prep GDF personnel for orbital rotations or manned space missions, and to recondition returning astronauts to Earth gravity and help them get back to normal. And it's not very often that there are medical emergencies in orbit—astronauts are thoroughly screened and cautious in their very nature; accidents and illness are rare. But in the rare event of an emergency, this is also one of the best hospitals in the world, at least as far as space medicine is considered. And they're more than equal to the task of saving John Tracy's life.

So he'll be stabilized, diagnosed, treated. He'll be taken care of by people who know who he is; people who've know the stories about the sort of work he does; people who've even worked with him firsthand. People who've heard whispers and rumours about just what's happened to him since the last time he landed in Zurich; the last time he was dying. People who'll be the first to know that he was the one to find his long-lost father, and who'll get to see his family reunite around him. People who'll later be called to testify about just what they found had been done to him, about his health and his mental state. Privately, there'll be the consensus that there's ever been an astronaut who's earned a complete mental and physical breakdown, it's probably Thunderbird Five.

The best and least they can do is keep him alive, even if he might not believe he's got anything left to live for.


	7. next of kin

Alan's waiting on the runway and as Scott brings TB1 in for a landing, seeing him at a distance, he's reminded of just how small his youngest brother is.

There's been a lot to step up to, lately, a lot to grow into, and Alan's risen to meet everything that's been thrown at him. He'd almost seemed to come into adulthood by conscious choice, by necessity. Because they were down one member, and someone needed to fill the role. Because his brothers needed an adult, and not a child. Because the only way to reach John was to try and approach him on equal terms.

But as Thunderbird One touches down on the tarmac and her engines begin to spin down, Scott's still firmly aware of the reality. Alan's only nineteen. A brilliant, competent, highly trained and highly skilled nineteen, but nineteen all the same. And he's been through a lot.

"You got Grandma?" Scott asks as he climbs out of the pilot's seat and turns to see how Virgil and their grandmother are doing, both strapped into jump seats in the back of One's sparse interior. It's hard enough to get into TB1, getting out of it can be challenging in a whole other way. And spry as she is, his grandmother's still eighty-five. "I can—"

"Grandma's got Grandma," his grandmother answers shortly, though Scott can see her hands tremoring slightly as she fumbles with her chest strap. Virgil's still not quite unbuckled his own harness yet. Still, she waves a hand towards the open hatch of the forward cockpit. "Go, Scott. We're right behind you."

"Yeah, I got Grandma," Virgil answers, heaving himself out of his seat with a weary groan and a sigh and proceeding to help his grandmother. "I think Grandma's probably gonna have to get _me_ right back."

"You know it, kiddo."

So they've got each other covered. So Scott doesn't worry about Virgil and Grandma any further, as he clambers down from the cockpit and lets his boots hit the tarmac.

It's dark in this part of the world; it had gotten darker as they'd crossed the globe, blazing north and westward into the sunset. Scott doesn't know the exact time, but equally he knows it doesn't really matter. Alan's still standing well back, clear of TB1's landing radius, and Scott can see the wind teasing at his pale blond hair, can see the way he's got his arms folded tight around his chest. He's still in uniform, they all are, so it's not like he can really be cold, but there's an undeniable chill in the air, and if Scott manages to feel it, then Alan probably does too.

Scott's quick to cover the distance to his baby brother, and when Alan finally looks up, Scott can see he's already hit his breaking point, but gone and forced his way past it, just waiting for an excuse to crumble. Before the youngest can say anything, Scott catches hold of him a little roughly, pulls him into a tight, insistent hug. Initially Alan seems a little too numb to return it in kind, but eventually Scott feels a squeeze around his torso and the breath shudders out of his brother. Something gives way, some of the rigidity seems to leave him and so Scott eases off, but keeps his hands on Alan's shoulders as he draws back to get a proper look at the kid.

"You're okay, Alan. You got them both here, and—and whatever else happens, that was _you_. You did good. Okay, Allie? You brought them both back and that counts for everything." Whether or not they're going to bring both Dad and John home is a different question. Whether or not this is the last place John will ever be—but that doesn't matter. In the moment, here and now, this is what Alan needs to hear.

There's a quick, tight nod, and Alan's eyes are glassy, a little damp with tears. But he swallows and straightens up and takes a deep breath, and proves Scott wrong about his breaking point. His voice is steadier than it has any right to be when he answers, "Yeah. Dad…Dad's with him. With John. I only got to see him once before they took him back, and he looked _awful_ but…but one of his doctors said, he's not as bad as he seems. It's just a lot, all at once, but she said they think he'll pull through. She says he's tougher than he looks."

It's a piece of good news Scott wasn't expecting, but he's still cautious in taking it at face value, hopes that some well meaning medic wasn't just placating his little brother. "Good. That's good, Alan. Yeah, John's…he'll be okay. He's gotta be, I've still gotta get my hands on him. And…and Dad?"

Some of the tension creeps back into his little brother, his spine stiffens, his hands flex slightly, twitching back into fists. "He's fine. I mean, he's not hurt, maybe a bit shook up about John and…a-and everything, but—"

Scott's pretty sure he can put it down to just the shock of everything he's gone through, but he still has a hard time believing just how disconnected Alan seems, from the fact that their father is alive. That their father is _here_. "What happened? What…all of this, Alan, what the hell was all this about? Has he…did he say? Did he tell you?"

There's something sort of funny in the way Alan's expression twists up a bit, then, but Scott doesn't know how to read into it, nor does he quite know what to make of the way Alan shakes his head. "No," he answers, but he's looking past Scott now—towards Virgil and Grandma, Scott assumes—"No, he…he didn't tell me. You'd better ask him yourself. Go, Scott, go on. I'm …I'll help Virg and Grandma. We'll be right behind you."

Right behind him. He's heard it twice now. It's Scott's job to leave people behind. It's his job to go first, to strike out ahead. He's not sure if something's been holding him back before now, if he's been waiting for permission. He's not sure why Alan, of all people, is the one to give it to him.

But he clasps his brother's shoulder for one more brief moment, and then, with nothing to hold him back, Scott runs for the brightly lit hospital doors.

He's lucky that they're expecting him. Lucky that they remember him from last time, lucky that IR blue is distinctive and easy to identify, and that this is the second instance of it they've seen this evening. Lucky that he's not stopped from bursting into the Emergency Room, but instead directed further inward still. He manages not to kick open the double doors leading onward into the hospital, and even succeeds in slowing down to a brisk trot, as he picks up a pert young blonde woman as an escort. He doesn't place her immediately, but—

"Dyson," he says, catching sight of the name tape across her labcoat. Abruptly he remembers her from last time, which surprises him enough to actually stop him in his tracks, as the first pair double doors swing shut behind them. "Dr. Dyson, you were—"

"Yes, I was," she answers, a little bit breathless as he allows her to catch up. "From last time. I spoke to your brother—to—to the younger one, the little—"

"Alan," Scott supplies, and gestures for her to lead the way and follows when she does. "Yeah, he mentioned. What's my—what's John's status?"

"Critical, but improving. He was in bad shape when he first came through, but we've had an hour to work on him since then. They're prepping him for surgery now. He's got…by our scans, it looks like a pacemaker, but the internal hardware's all wrong. And in any case the leads were badly implanted, they've scarred the inside of his heart. Might be the beginnings of an infection, they'll take cultures from the site and they've already started on his blood work."

That sounds bad. That sounds bad enough that Scott catches her elbow, startled. "Surgery?"

"Just to pull the cardiac implant out, it's doing more harm than good. Next of kin didn't indicate that John's ever suffered from a heart condition, so—"

Next of kin. Scott's almost dizzy with the realization that _next of kin_ means their father, and he swallows as he realizes that his father's also probably years out of date regarding what's current with John, medically. "Right. Yeah, no, he doesn't. Not that I know of, I mean. I don't know why he'd have a pacemaker, that's—I don't know about that. You're removing it?"

Dr. Dyson nods and Scott follows her through another door, and into a long corridor. "They've brought in a cardiac specialist from Zurich, they're just processing his security clearance before they can permit him to operate."

There's a twitch of a muscle in Scott's jaw as his teeth clench, and he has to stop himself from making a remark about security clearances and the _last_ time John was here. Dr. Dyson might notice, because she clears her throat and makes it for him, awkward and apologetic, "—I know there was an…an incident. Last time. It won't happen again."

"…Thank you." It's the only response he can think of that doesn't come across as haughty or condescending. He changes the subject before he says something he'll regret. "Am I gonna be able to see him? I just…if you're putting him under, then I…if I could, just…before he—"

"I'll see what I can do." She stops at the junction of another corridor, and her hand falls to his arm and he turns as she points down the hallway past him. "The waiting room's through there."

And he's been here before. He's been in this place, in this exact hallway, headed for this exact waiting room. The memory's suddenly clear as the daylight had been, then, not even all that long ago. It's dark outside now, and the light is different, all weird and fluorescent; no natural sunlight through the narrow windows that run along the top of the corridor.

And there was no one for him to turn to, then.

There's someone there for him, now.


	8. outstripes everybody in the place

This is the stupidest, most frustrating thing that possibly could have happened.

Somewhere in this stupid hospital, his big brother is dying. Somewhere else, presumably, his father's back from the dead. These two new facets of reality keep reversing priority in the back of Virgil's mind, and reminding him that he's worn out and scared and frustrated, and hardly at his best.

This is the worst place he could be, even if he _were_ at his best.

Because he's standing—they don't even have an extra goddamn chair—behind his grandmother, who sits patiently across the desk from a GDF security officer, who's only about halfway through processing her security clearance. His eighty-five year old grandmother, Kansas native. His grandmother, who's hobbies include burning dinner and internet poker. Whose worst vice is calling phone psychics, to talk with a sympathetic party about the son she'd believed was dead. His grandmother hadn't even gotten a chance to get dressed properly, before Scott had stuck her in the back of TB1. She's still wearing slipper boots, and there's a stray roller caught in one of her silver gray curls, and Virgil hasn't found a moment to pull it out and stash it in one of his pockets.

He and his brothers are all vetted by GDF security as a matter of course, every year each of them re-ups their clearance. Virgil's been through this interview and, caught as he is in the hazy place that exists between tiredness and utter exhaustion, he feels like he can predict each question before it's asked.

When the officer gets to "Describe your late husband's personal and professional affiliations", something in Virgil just _snaps_. One of his hands drops to his grandmother's shoulder and the other clenches into a fist at his side.

"D'you think, maybe, this might not be a little _redundant_? I just spent the past fourteen hours backing up GDF crews in Madagascar, and now I have to listen to one of you people giving my grandma the third degree? We can't get a little bit of reciprocity here?" he asks, and glowers at the man behind the desk. He hasn't bothered to note the man's name, doesn't care who he is or what rank he holds. "If me and my brothers are clear, then we should be able to vouch for our _grandmother_. Who is _eighty-five_ and _lives on an island_. She doesn't exactly get up to a lot of trouble."

"Oh, I don't know, Virgil, I still raise my fair share of hell," his grandma comments mildly. "That was a joke, Lieutenant," she adds, and gives the man a tolerant smile. "Now…"

Virgil recognizes instantly that she's trying to smooth over the situation. She does it with Gordon, sometimes, when he starts to get spun up, starts to look for someone to take a shot at. It's something Virgil's learned from her, even, a technique he's lifted wholesale for dealing with his little brother. And yet, before she can continue—

"Did you run my dad through all this bullshit?"

There it is.

And Virgil's got the ground beneath his feet now, gaining traction and advancing, even though he stays stock still where he stands behind his grandmother. "Did you ask _him_ where he's been for the last three goddamn years? Did he have to sit through this fucking farce? What about _my brother_ , did you look him up? Did you look up all the shit that went down the last time he came through here, or did you cut the red tape and let him through? He's going _to die_. And I think we'd kind of like to _see him_ before he _does_!"

His hand hasn't left his grandma's shoulder and he feels her body tense beneath his grip. For all his sudden fury, this hasn't tightened at all, because gentleness around his grandmother is something that's been hardwired into Virgil, maybe more than anyone else. Still, his fingers twitch against the way her back goes rigid as she straightens in her chair. And her voice has changed when she addresses the officer—withering in his chair beneath the onslaught, practically cringing—and says, "Excuse me, dear."

Virgil realizes a little too late that he's been shouting, because his grandmother stands up and turns on him, just as two uniformed security personnel pull the door open behind him.

If she'd shouted back, that might've been better, but she doesn't. Instead, her voice is as quiet as death as she asks, "Is this the way I raised you?"

It's not, and he knows it's not. But equally, and not for the first time, Virgil's aware that it's not fair. It's not fair that he's the one she'd always taken aside, in those rocky few years after mom, told to be the bigger person. Made a joke of it, because even as young as ten years old, he'd already been broader across the shoulders than John and just _bigger_ than Gordon. And his grandma had told him to learn to live in the middle of it all, to be the calm at the center. Told him to go after Scott and to be there for Alan. To check up on John and when Gordon lashed out, not to hit him back. He's bigger than the rest of them, after all.

His grandmother is eighty-five, and in her slippers, she's an inch shorter than Gordon. She's a handsbreadth shorter than Virgil, and he's probably at least twice her weight on his own, and with thirty pounds worth of uniform and gear on top of that.

And he shrinks in front of her. Virgil's a hurricane and Gordon's a riptide. Scott's a bolt of white fire. Alan's the wind off the sea and John's the long, slow fall of entropy. But Grandma Tracy is the heart and soul of the island itself. And at the end of the day, they all wash up against her shores.

So there's nothing to say but, "No, ma'am," in a voice that's barely a whisper.

"We're fine here," his grandmother says over his shoulder, to the two security officers who've filled the door behind him, because he's just screamed at some hapless GDF Lieutenant, who's only following procedure, only doing his job, and only doing it to be absolutely sure that nothing like what happened to John last time could possibly happen again.

In the field, he and his brothers all hold an informal rank equivalent to a GDF Captaincy. Virgil's not sure what ranks are held by the two security officers behind him, but his Grandma probably outstripes everybody in the place, because the door closes again behind him and he can't help but drop his head, even as her hands come up and catch his face. "I've gotcha, kiddo," she says softly, and her thumb swipes a tear off his cheek before he even realizes it's there. "Gotcha right back, mmhm?"

He knows she knows, but Virgil swallows and says it anyway, just about chokes on the truth, "He's _here_. Dad's here."

"I know, baby, I know that." She's come in for the hug, can't quite reach around the bulk of his chest to pat his back, but she rubs her hand up and down the side of his ribcage. "But the gentleman says that this is what needs to happen before I can go any further. I've woken up every day for the past three years without my boy, Virgil, you think this last little thing is too much to ask? You think your old grandma can't answer a few questions?"

"N-no…" She makes an excellent point. She's always been stronger than he is—stronger than the five of them combined, sometimes. But Virgil still can't help feeling as though she's missing the point. "They're _both_ here, Grandma, and w-we—w-with _John_. And John's…he's…" Dying. Going to die, because that's just what dying means, and the only difference they can make now is whether he'll be alone or not. Virgil's already trying to brace himself, trying to shore himself up internally for what it'll be like when the inevitable happens, but it's like trying to plug up a dam from the wrong side, and he doesn't think he can do it. Knows he can't. He needs to, but even if it's necessary, Virgil doesn't think he'll be able to face up to this one.

And his grandma doesn't seem to realize that he _has_ to. "Shh, shh. Don't you go counting your brother out just yet."

"But—"

"Virgil." Her hands have fallen away, and they clasp his fingers now. He can feel the chill beneath her skin, the bones of her fingers, the way everything about her is so much softer and smaller and _older_ than he is, and yet— "All the lives your father's helped save, everything he ever believed in, and you think he'd let your brother slip away? C'mon, kiddo. And everything John must have done to find your dad, everything he almost gave up, and you think he's not going to pull through? Sweetheart. Have a little faith."

This is the trade-off, of course. In being the one who gets taken aside by their grandmother, in being the favourite, being the one who reminds her most of Grandpa Grant. The only reason Virgil's able to provide his brothers with the bedrock they need to stay steady and even and stable—is because he's got his grandmother, backing him up and feeding him all the calmness and clarity and wisdom that the rest of them get secondhand.

So he takes a deep breath, steadies himself.

"…Okay."

"That's my boy." She pats his hand gently and gives him a warm, slightly watery smile of her own, because the woman might be strong, but she's not made of stone. "Go find your father, Virgil. Or your brother, whoever comes first. I'm all right, kiddo. Home stretch. I'll be right behind you."

Virgil balks at that, even with everything else she's said, "I'm not _leaving_ —"

"And I'm not _asking_."

And that does it.

So he gives her a hug and a kiss on the forehead, and then offers a sort of feeble nod to the Lieutenant behind the desk, by way of slightly awkward apology. There's a jerk of the man's chin in response and it's as good an acknowledgment as Virgil could've hoped for.

He turns for the door and hopes that the two security officers aren't still on the other side of it. He's going to have to cross the hospital's main entryway, awkwardly, and try and find Alan. Alan will know where John is, because that's where he'd said their father would be.

Virgil doesn't know just what kind of difference their dad might make, as far as John's life or death goes. Maybe it wouldn't matter either way. But when he opens the door and meets a hauntingly familiar pair of blue eyes on the other side, there's a part of him that still feels suddenly, deeply betrayed.


	9. still in one piece

Alan doesn't know where his father is. Or where his brothers are. Because he's not actually in the hospital, at the moment, but outside, in a little courtyard/patio type place between one wing of the facility and another. He has his comm on, and he's holding his breath, trying to raise Kayo for the third time. She's been commdark this entire time, but sometimes all that means is that she's not answering calls, not that she doesn't know she's getting them. He really, really wants to talk to Kayo.

So he just about breaks down when she answers, and drops onto a bench from sheer relief at the sound of her voice, though she hasn't connected video for the call. "Go ahead, Thunderbird Three."

He goes right to it, quick like a bandaid, just goes right ahead— "Kayo, my dad's alive. And John's…I found John. I found them both."

Her pause on the end of the line is only a second or two long, but it makes his heart squeeze in his chest and he closes his eyes as she answers, "Yes. Okay. That's...good. We're about an hour out from the island, still, Alan, and I—"

"Did you know? Kayo, did you know he was alive?"

He doesn't know what he'll do, if Kayo's known this whole time. Lady Penelope had known, and Parker. Uncle Lee and Kyrano. Alan himself had found out, sooner than Scott or Virgil or Gordon, because EOS had told him everything, had mapped out the entire scenario. He hadn't told them then because—well. There'd been bigger problems at hand, and he'd known he couldn't afford the distraction. So as it stands, Alan probably knows more than just about anybody.

But if his big sister had one big secret, then it's not a hard leap to assume she might have had another.

He's holding his breath as she finally answers, "...not until just recently. Not more than a few hours now. Parker told me. I'm sorry I didn't—"

The relief is what finally cuts the tension out of him, allows his limbs to loosen and his shoulders to drop, and he heaves a sigh and rubs at his eyes. "No, that's fine. You're busy, I know that. I…I've been busy too. That's okay, I just...I was scared that you—"

"Oh, Alan. No, Allie, of course not, I'd never—" She pauses and exhales, hard. "Alan, I know I lied to you about my family. But I wouldn't lie about _yours_ , and if I'd known, then I would've told you. I promise, I would've told you. And I would have _found him_ , Alan, I wouldn't have let him do this to you—to all of you. It's...I don't know. There's still a lot I don't know, but I'm working on it. I'll tell you what I find out, as soon as I can. Okay?"

For a moment he thinks it's strange, just how much more he knows about the situation than she does—but it's not time to tell her, either. And it's not why he called, but before he can get to asking his question, she asks one of her own.

"Is John okay?"

And, like a hypocrite, Alan can't tell her the truth.

Because the answer is just no, he isn't. It's the only answer possible, because he's just _not_ , and Alan doesn't know if he's going to be. The last Alan heard, his brother was being stabilized and prepped for surgery, to cut out the device in his chest, to sear away the scar tissue building up in his heart. But even beyond the fact that he's sick and exhausted and his heart is failing, even if he lives through whatever follows, Alan doesn't know if John's ever going to be okay again. Of all the things he knows that other people don't, yet, this is maybe the worst of them.

So he twists and bends the truth into something he can offer to his sister, and says, "He's...pretty rough. He was in really bad shape when we broke orbit, but they're looking after him now. They'll fix him up."

"What's wrong with him? What happened?"

Alan swallows and shakes his head, though he knows she can't see him. "A lot. It's his heart, and yeah, it's pretty bad. But his doctor says he has a good chance, and Scotty says he'll be okay—Virgil and Scott've gotta be with him, by now, I should probably go soon, too."

There's a long silence on Kayo's end of the line and Alan knows that he's scared her. Still, she's his big sister, and though he hears the quaver of emotion in her voice as she says it, she still tries to reassure him, "John's tough, Alan. I'm sure they'll sort it all out."

"Yeah." He hasn't actually called to talk about John. There's not a lot he can do for John, right now. And there's still one more member of the family who needs to be pulled into the loop. "Is Gordon with you?"

This time the silence that answers him takes on the tone of guilt, and Kayo's voice is troubled when she answered. "Yes. Sort of. He's not in Shadow, he's in a chopper with Lady Penelope and Parker, and I'm escorting them back to the island. We...I made a mistake. And we ran into some trouble, he got...a bit roughed up. But he's okay, Alan, he wouldn't want you worrying about him. Don't worry. I think he'll be all right."

Whatever's happened, Gordon's odds have got to be better than John's are. Alan's not worried about Gordon. "Still in one piece?"

There's another pregnant pause. "Well, he _will_ be."

Alan's not sure he wants to know what that means, but it's also not the reason he'd called. "Can I talk to him?"

"Yeah, I can patch you through. He's, um. He hit his head at some point—or someone hit him, I don't know. I still don't know just exactly what happened. But he's got at least a mild concussion, and it's possible...well, whatever you tell him, Alan, just be aware that it might not stick."

"Oh." That's a bit of a curveball, but it doesn't change the fact that what Alan has to tell his brother isn't something that should come from anyone else, even if he's going to have to tell him more than once. "Well, okay. Put me through, Kayo, and I'll just—someone should let him know what's going on, we can't leave him out of this. He'd be mad."

"FAB, Alan."

It'll take a few seconds to connect and Alan slumps against the backrest of the bench while he waits. He sniffs a little, rubs at his eyes again. He's got a headache and he's tired. The adrenaline's long since bled out of him, and all he wants is for all of this to be over, but the part of him that's gone and grown up knows better, and knows that it's only just beginning.

"Master Alan, sir?"

He'd been expecting the call to go straight to Gordon, so he's a little bit surprised by Parker's voice. "Oh...hi, yeah. Yeah, Parker, it's me. Um, is Gordon there?"

"Her ladyship's just woken 'im up, sir, won't be a moment. H'all right there, lad?"

"Yeah, fine." That's a lie, but he's not exactly about to tell Parker the truth. Alan hadn't been sure how he'd feel, talking to Penelope or Parker. Reaching for anger, he finds it absent from the place where he expects it, and instead only a sort of strange, funny feeling about the adults in his life, and the choices they make. He wonders if Parker only kept this secret on Penelope's orders, or if it was something he'd known to do of his own accord. He wonders whether it matters one way or the other.

"Here you are, Master Alan. You take care now, sir."

It's hard to be mad at Parker. At the moment Alan's not sure if he has the energy to be mad at _anyone_ , but he knows enough to decide he's not mad at Parker. At least not right now. "Thanks, Parker."

There's the click of a handset picking up the call and then Alan hears his brother's voice, groggy and catching the tail end of a slight groan, "Alan?"

"Hey, Gordon. You okay?"

"Allie, a motherfucker _cut off my finger_."

Oh.

So _that's_ what she meant.

Alan's still a little bit too numb from the severity of what's going on with John to be phased by the notion that Gordon's missing a finger. The notion that someone cut it off him, though— " _What_? Who the hell...?"

" _Ughhh_."

Maybe it's worth worrying a little bit about Gordon. "Gordon, are you all right? What happened?"

"Mm. No. I mean, mm'yeah. I mean, 'm'fine. Not... _ow_ , though, _fuck_. Sec." There's a pause and Alan hears something move against the receiver Gordon's got, imagines his brother pressing the comm against his chest. There's a few second of muffled silence, and Alan mentally takes himself through the same routines Gordon's taught him, for dealing with pain. Careful counting, controlled breathing. When his brother's voice picks back up, it's with the last of a breath let out, and he sounds a little steadier, if he's still rambling a little, "—but I'm okay, Al. Nothing much worse'n stuff I've done to my own damn self. Hit my head. Ribs're...couple cracked ribs. Nothing new under the sun. Finger, though, s'a new one. _Ow_. It's okay. Brains'll fix it. S'good with...with...digits. Brains's. Al? _Digits_. 'Cuz of all the math'n shit, Allie." There's a pause, and then, helpfully. "It's a joke."

The fact that he'd crack a joke is reassuring, but the way he'd wandered through it doesn't bode well for how well he's going to apprehend what Alan has to tell him next.

It's no excuse _not_ to tell him, though, and at least Kayo will be there, will be able to help explain, if Gordon needs it explained again. Alan takes a deep breath and starts, "Gordon, you listening?"

"Mmhmm."

"I mean really try and listen to me, Gordie, okay? This important."

" _Yeah_ , Al. Hit me." There's a faint chuckle, at that. "S'what everybody else does today."

It's weird, that he'd be the one to tell Gordon. There's no one else to do it, but despite the fact that they're the closest in age, Gordon's always been the one who's most liked to remind Alan that he's the baby of the family, the littlest and the youngest. He's not sure if it's the concussion that's made the routine slip, or if Gordon's actually listening to him as though they're both adults. Doesn't really matter. Maybe this is that last step, the last barrier between Alan and real adulthood. Talking to Gordon like an equal. This isn't news he can deliver as Gordon's baby brother.

So, with thousands of miles between them, and uncertain if it's going to manage to stick or not, Alan steels himself and says, "John found Dad. Dad's alive, Gordon."

And there's nothing but silence on the other end of the line.


	10. down in the depths

After a while—he's not sure how long—Gordon says, "Oh."

A little while later—again, not quite sure how long—he remembers the end of the sentence, and comments a little dazedly, "I thought I dreamed that."

It's morning in this part of the world, and they've flown southeast out of Thailand and into the sunrise. The brilliance of the light in the helicopter is what makes him realize he hadn't opened his eyes before just now. The fact that the interior is still blazingly, blindingly white does his aching head no favours and he shuts his eyes against the brightness almost as soon as he opens them. There's supposed to be a comm unit in his hand, he thinks, but instead he's got Penny's fingers wrapped around his and can't remember why he'd had a comm in the first place. Not a pressing concern.

"Gordon? Dreamt what?"

He doesn't know. He knows that he has _this_ dream a lot, the one where he wakes up without actually waking up, with his head in her lap and his hand in hers and her fingers carding through his hair. The one where he just gets a few moments of soft, warm morning sunshine and gentleness and peace and quiet, and has an excuse just to lie there and blink stupidly and stare up at her perfect, pretty face.

Only, reality tells itself apart from dreams in the way her eyes are tired and red-rimmed, the way her voice tremors slightly, the way she sounds worried, sad. The way her hand clings to his like a lifeline, the way there are streaks of tears through her make up, and the way there's a smudge of dark red blood across her collarbone, and a splattered spray of the same marring the perfect white neckline of her dress.

And red reminds him of Alan, reminds him of the way he's just gotten off the comm _with_ Alan, and what Alan had _said_ —only Alan had said something borderline impossible, something he doesn't think he's been able to believe. He can't make head or tail of what Alan's just told him, because it turns the whole world upside down, if it's true.

But, well.

If anyone would know, she would. That's her job, after all. Knowing the things they don't—the things _he_ doesn't, especially—and knowing what to do with that information.

So he asks her.

"…'s'my dad alive?"

He's looking up at her, but she looks away when she answers, and her voice is soft, "Yes."

Gordon takes a moment to digest that information and wonders if he'd be a little less thunderstruck if it weren't for the concussion. Almost certainly. The next thing he says is something he's repeating back from Alan, though he can't quite remember Alan saying it. "John found him?"

"Yes."

Well.

If anyone could, it'd be John.

And abruptly, without quite expecting it, Gordon gets pulled below the surface and down into the depths of the truth, because _holy shit_ , his dad's _alive_. He's not the sort of person who'd think or feel anything as trite as _somehow I_ _'ve always known_ , but there's a certain sort of _rightness_ about it. Something about it just makes sense. And _that_ _'s_ where John had gone, obviously, that's what John had been up to; looking for their father. It's somehow easier to wrangle with the idea if he slips down below the aching and muddled up surface of his thoughts, and starts to plumb his way through pure intuition. These are all things that just make sense. Down in the depths—even with the blood loss and the head injury and the exhaustion—there's a surprising sort of clarity to be found.

So it's a leap not of intellect but of instinct. Surfacing up out of the darkness and and blinking his eyes back open in the bright white light of the helicopter, and looking up at Penelope, all in white of her own—

"You knew."

And he isn't asking.

But then, he's not quite telling her, either. It's not an accusation, even, he's just stating a fact, putting words to a new part of his reality. Dad's alive, John's back from wherever he's been, and Penny's known the whole time.

So Penny's a liar.

But, hell, he's always known that. That's just Penny's job; professional liar. He's always been the kind of dumb bastard who wants to believe her anyway. And he's _told_ her that, above and below the streets of London. Once, clumsily, on the tarmac at Heathrow, and then again, with far more deliberate intent, in a flooded subway tunnel. Penelope lies, it's a fact of life, he's already decided to trust in her reasons for doing so. All that's changed is the fact that now he knows what she'd had to lie about.

Gordon's still deliberately holding critical thought out at arm's length, feeling his way through this one instead. His heart's always been quicker than his brain, anyway. He's still caught in the span of time it takes her to let out a shaky breath, bow her head, and whisper, "Yes."

And then she breaks.

She just shatters, suddenly and completely, and the tears that had been slow and small and subtle before now turn into broken sobs, rending out of her, awful and raw and wrong. His Dad's alive, and his brother's back, but both those things still seem secondary to the fact that the woman he's in love with is crying as though her heart's been broken.

 _That_ wasn't supposed to happen. He hadn't meant for that to happen.

 _Shit_.

He's grabbed the back of the bench seat, hauled himself upward and upright into a sitting position before he fully realizes that it's maybe a bad idea, that maybe he's about to puke all over the helicopter's white carpet. But he dodges that bullet, and the surge of dizziness and nausea is mercifully short, because sometimes Gordon's just lucky like that. He runs through a quick mental catalog of which parts of him are still hurting, and which parts are functional.

His left hand's obviously out of commission, left arm tucked snugly around aching ribs. He's bruised about the throat and the back and not _actually_ everywhere else, though it sure as hell feels like it. His head hurts like the damn devil. He's tired and still a little dazed, though the panic response to "Penny, crying" is starting to wash away some of the haziness. Even in spite of the ways he hurts, he's got too much to deal with in the short term to worry about it right now.

So, sitting up, turning back towards her and reaching out, just to put his good hand on her shaking shoulders, try to calm her down—what he doesn't expect is the way she flinches away from his touch, shakes her head viciously and pulls away.

"Pen—"

" _Don_ _'t_." Another shake of her head, another sob, but for all that seems broken about her, she retains surprising command of her voice, pleading, "Don't do this, Gordon. _Please_ , don't. You m-mustn't—"

"Okay. Okay, hey, shh. Shh, it's okay. I won't. I'm not gonna do anything, Pen. You're okay."

It's in the moment that he hears his own voice that Gordon realizes he's slipped automatically back into work-mode, assumed the gently reassuring, calming tones of the rescuer. His brain's still limping along behind his heart and his gut where instinctive action is considered, but abruptly he realizes it's because the subroutines for dealing with trauma have kicked in automatically, and he's talking to her as though she's been hurt, somehow. It takes him a further few seconds to catch up with exactly why, because somewhere along the line he's missed the difference between the smear of blood he's left on her skin, versus the splatter of blood across the bodice of her dress. He can account for the first but not for the second.

Gordon's well aware (mostly) of what's happened to _him_ , having walked blindly into the Hood's base of operations and made a concerted effort to kill the man—but he doesn't know what's happened to _her_.

And the blood splattered across her dress makes that a bit of a terrifying thought.

But the part of him that gets terrified isn't the part that's risen to the occasion. He's no good to anyone if he can't be good to _her_ at a time like this, when she's so obviously hurting and frightened and traumatized in her own right; when she needs someone who can be calm and even and steady.

Well. That's just the job.

If he'd pulled her out of a burning building or out of a ravine somewhere, and they had to sit together and wait for evac, he'd be doing the same thing. Just careful, gentle contact, and talking to her, trying to calm her down. Maybe that's the next step. He takes a deep, steadying breath, and summons up his voice. "Hey, Pen," he says quietly, not quite looking at her, because it seems like the sort of state in which she'd hate to be observed. "Hey, you're okay. It's all gonna be all right, Pen, I promise. Almost home, Penny. It'll all be okay."

He shifts slightly—carefully closer to her, though not too close. She didn't like it when he'd touched her. But he thinks it might be worth a second try. And so, very carefully, he reaches for her hand. He's surprised when she allows him to take it, and he closes his fingers around hers, gives a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

And then, unexpected but not unwelcome, she moves just the tiniest bit closer, and leans into him, soft and small and so terribly sad. He freezes up for only a moment, but then she shudders and lets out a soft little sigh. And the tears start up again. His hand leaves hers, but only so he can wrap an arm around her shoulders, and pull her closer still.


	11. intangible and esoteric

She's gone.

It's not the only thing he knows, but it's the only thing that matters.

He knows they've done something that's taken the pain away, but whatever it was has taken other parts of him along with it. So now, to the degree that he's able to feel anything at all, he just feels empty and hopeless and false, dulled and drained of emotion. He's been left alone with what he knows, but the facts just sit inside him, hard and cold and sharp. The things that he knows are like needles skewered through his chest, pinning him down, holding him fixed in place. He thinks he'd be able to feel them if he could move, but he can't, except to turn his head slightly or twitch his fingers.

He knows he's been brought to some curtained off little part of the hospital, somewhere that's not actually a room, some transitional place. He remembers watching lights pass overhead as they'd brought him here, remembers how he had tried and failed to count them, without understanding why. He knows he's waiting for something, but knows also that it's not something he wants.

People keep passing. Occasionally someone will stop beside him, will check on the IV line dripping ice water into his veins, or the leads attached to his chest, tracking his vitals. One of the people who stops takes the time to gently wipe the tears out of his eyes, off his face, and brushes his hair off his forehead. A blond woman with grey eyes stays to awkwardly pat his fingers, and to tell him something he hadn't been able to understand, then, and can't remember, now.

They're not going to let him die. He knows that by the insistent presence of the monitor that tracks his heart rate, his blood pressure, his breathing. By the bright red crash cart parked nearby. By the way people keep checking on him, telling him he'll be okay. They're onto him, now, they must suspect that he doesn't want any of this. That he wants to stop, wants to fall, wants to let it all go and just follow his partner into the dark. They'll never be together again, and he knows that, but at least if he went her way, he wouldn't have to be alone.

But then, he isn't.

Summoned by something intangible and esoteric, John's not alone any longer, because Scott's there. He stands just at the foot of the bed, all in blue and silver, same as ever. John's not sure how or when it happened, that Scott's there, but he is anyway.

He doesn't know what he looks like, to Scott. Doesn't know that he looks just as empty as he feels, that his eyes are blank and glassy, red from crying and shadowed with exhaustion, with diminished but still extant pain. They've long since cut him out of his space suit, and the hospital gown he wears is a white so dim it's almost grey, makes him look pale and washed out. He doesn't know that he's lost enough weight that it shows in his face and in his hands—his fingers. The scars on his hands have never been so evident as they are now, lines of dark, fresh red and old, dead silver against the paleness of his skin. And he doesn't know that Scott had been told his little brother was dying, and that the news that he'll probably pull through is still only about fifteen minutes old.

So John doesn't know that this is why Scott smiles at him, and isn't coherent enough to recognize the fact that Scott hasn't smiled like this in _years_ , big and wide and with his whole heart in it, like all is right in the world.

Or as right as it can be, considering the fact that his brother's laid out on a hospital gurney, waiting for someone to cut him open, and wishing to die while he does.

But then, it's not like Scott could know that. Not all of it, anyway.

John blinks and suddenly Scott's right beside him, still smiling, but gently now and with tears in his eyes. His hand, gloved but still warm through blue neoprene, clasps John's fingers, thumb rubbing slowly back and forth along the ridge of his knuckles. And it was the sort of blink that had lasted quite a lot longer than a moment, so perhaps it's not _actually_ the first thing Scott has to say to him, when he says, "Johnny, you _found Dad_."

And Scott can't possibly know how much that hurts. Can't know how badly John wishes that he hadn't, actually, found their father. It might not even be the first thing Scott says. John doesn't know, it's hard to concentrate from one moment to the next. But it seems that way. It seems like after everything John's been through, everything he's done and everything he's lost, the first thing Scott's chosen to care about is their father. Scott makes no mention of anything else, none of the rest of it. John doesn't know if his brother's ignorant of or indifferent to the truth of what their father has cost him, but it hurts all the same.

And as the pain of it bleeds into him, Scott mistakes the faint, broken sound he makes for something else, mistakes the way John's eyes squeeze closed against the pressure of tears. "John? Oh, shit, Johnny, no, no." Scott's free hand catches John's jaw as he tries to turn away, the hand still clasping his fingers tightens its grip. "Hey—hey, hey, hey, John. Shh, shh. C'mon—it's okay, I swear. I promise, you're going to be okay. Don't be scared. I'm right here, little brother. We're _all_ here, Johnny, and we'll all be here when you come out the other side of this thing. Virgil and Alan and Grandma—and _Dad_ , John. _You found Dad_ , and they're all together, back in the waiting room. They wouldn't let more than one of us through, J, they need to put you under soon. I'm staying until they do, don't worry. I know…I know this is a lot. But trust me, okay? You're going to be just fine, John."

Scott's hand moves, a warm, carefully gentle grip against John's shoulder. He keeps talking, and John doesn't want to listen, but his thoughts are still feeble, half-formed things, struggling against the wash of painkillers in his system. Scott's sincerity, his staunch conviction in the rightness of the world—both combined are just stronger than anything John has left. His own voice is caught, lodged firmly at the back of his throat, and would only break if he tried to say anything anyway. So there's nothing he can do but listen.

And his brother goes on, talking just to fill the space between them, saying things he must think are important, but which might just do more harm than good. "…there's so much you're gonna have to tell me, J. After. When you're all patched up, when you've had some rest. You've gotta tell me how you found him; how you knew he was still out there. I don't…I was _so_ goddamn mad at you, when you left. I couldn't imagine why. But I'm not anymore, Johnny, I get it now. I'm just sorry you ever thought you had to go through all this alone, John. I…I guess I don't know what I did to make you think you couldn't talk to me, couldn't _tell_ me that this was what you were doing—but whatever it was, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I let you down. John, I _would_ _'ve_ found a way to help you, if I'd known it was about Dad."

It wasn't. And there's the slowly dawning realization that Scott's just never going to understand. He's already putting together his own version of events, and whatever John thinks or feels isn't going to be relevant, because Scott's never going to believe that anything could've been more important than their father.

But EOS was. She meant everything— _was_ everything—and now she's gone. And even with his older brother beside him, clasping his hand; with his entire family waiting for him, wanting to see him again; with more doctors and nurses than he's been able to keep track of trying to pull him back from the brink—John knows more than ever that he's alone, and from here on, he always will be.

His big brother stays, but it doesn't matter. He keeps talking, but John's stopped listening, because all Scott has to tell him are things he already knows. Scott's the one to tell him that they're putting the anesthetic into the line that threads into his wrist, as though John can't feel it as soon as it starts to hit. Scott's tells him that everything is going to start to go dark and that he's going to feel strange, as though it's not already happening. Scott promises to be waiting on the other side of the operating room, tells him again that everything's going to be okay, because for as good as his intentions are, he can't possibly know it for a lie. Scott doesn't know how much things between them have changed, as the void in between him and his brother deepens into darkness.

Four years between Scott and John, and usually thousands of miles. Disparate politics, values, beliefs. Scott and John aren't similar, never have been. But they're brothers, and they've been brothers for longer than anyone else in the family, from that very first time Scott had laid eyes on that tiny, sleeping bundle in his mother's arms.

It's the first time in John's life that it hasn't been enough.


	12. story without an ending

Jeff sits at John's bedside, next to his mother and across from his eldest son.

It had taken four hours to cut the hardware out of John's chest. Blood and tissue cultures tell the presence of infection in his heart. Scar tissue built up around the cardiac leads has been carefully excised, and the device itself was removed without undue complication. Cut out of him and deactivated, it can do no further harm, and while the damage already done is serious, it's not irreversible. John's young, and despite everything he's been through, still relatively healthy. His doctors are confident that with appropriate treatment, care, and rest, he'll eventually make a full recovery.

His son's been started on a course of antibiotics now, and is fresh out of the recovery room, where he'd been vague and frightened and in enough pain and distress to merit further medication. So now he sleeps, and looks like he deserves nothing less, with his eyes shadowed and his chest neatly bandaged, white edges peeking out beneath a pale blue hospital gown. If it's not quite peace, John's at least quiet, and the monitor tracking his vitals pulses the soft, consistent sound of a heart finally settled, and slowly mending, if still a long way from mended.

His mother sits upright, forward at the edge of her chair, with her hands enclosing one of John's. Occasionally something compels her to reach up and brush her fingers through his hair; to stroke his cheek or touch his shoulder, though in the course of each gesture, one of her hands keeps a hold of his. It's not hard to imagine she's reluctant to let him go. If Jeff feels the same compulsion for contact, he also doesn't feel like his touch would be welcome, or that he deserves to take any comfort of his own from the warmth of his son's hand, the persistent reassurance of his pulse. He's no small part of the reason John's in this state to begin with, and knows it.

So it's good that his mother has John in hand, so to speak. The depth of strength in the woman is awe-inspiring, and with what she'd lost restored to her, she possesses a quality of serenity that fortifies the entire room. She'd been the one to send Virgil and Alan away, into Zurich to check into a hotel room. The both of them had been fraught and exhausted, and prohibited from crowding into the small, private room their brother's been assigned. They'll be back in the morning, and will take over for her and Scott, looking after their brother.

Scott had flatly refused to be sent anywhere, though Jeff can't tell if it's John's company he doesn't want to be out of, or his own. There's no reason it wouldn't be both. He can't seem to muster his grandmother's patience, restiveness runs all through him. Allowed to bend hospital rules a bit to stay with his brother, he can't seem to settle. He stands as often as he sits, paces the room, checks his comms by force of habit, though hospital policy has these deactivated. Occasionally he flits back to John's side to peer at him, or to reach down to touch his other hand, fingertips against an upturned palm, as though checking to be sure that John's still real, still there.

Scott's still in uniform. Blue is emphatically his colour, and the silver that slashes across his chest picks up the same threads of salt-and-pepper at his temples—a gross injustice at thirty-one, even if a little bit of grey seems to suit him, gives him a certain air of dignity. Standing, Scott's taller than his father, the same as John is, and even edges John out by an inch or so. But there's something about the way Scott carries himself that has him standing stronger, straighter than ever. He makes his brother look so young, so fragile by comparison. When Scott leans over the bedside, Jeff gets a glimpse of the same protectiveness he should be able to feel himself.

And yet when he manages to glance at John, he can't seem to summon up anything but guilt. There's a part of him that's intensely relieved by the fact that he won't be able to be here much longer, and likely won't be present when his son wakes up. There's too much that needs to be done, he has obligations elsewhere. If John were in worse shape it might be different, but he's steadily improving, going to be fine, and has the rest of the family here to look after him. Jeff can feel better about leaving than he does about staying. There's so much to do. So much is about to change.

Kyrano is on his way from New York, with a personally selected handful of Tracy Industries' upper echelons—lawyers and board members and extra security, to say nothing of a whole phalanx of the PR department, all herded onto a chartered flight and due to arrive in about four hours. It's not that Jeff Tracy's return was expected, per se, but TI is the sort of company that has contingencies for its contingencies. There'd been a plan in place for Jeff Tracy's death or disappearance. There's a framework in place for his return.

Jeff Tracy's story will break with the news by morning, in early versions. The current cycle is already devoted almost entirely to the inexplicable loss of nearly thousand assorted satellites, the collective armament of low-earth orbit, all falling from the heavens and burning up in atmo. The WWSA are scrambling to project debris patterns and to issue advisories around the event, to anyone and everyone operating in low earth orbit. Various world governments are clamoring for an explanation. The GDF have released statements in response, and various high ranking members know _exactly_ what's going on, seven years after the idea was initially proposed. Colonel Casey remains IR's liaison to the GDF and has been briefed and will probably arrive within the hour. Lord Hugh Creighton-Ward has similarly been contacted and, as has always been his intent, is preparing the release of documents and data relevant to project Heavenward, and Jefferson's Tracy's role in its orchestration and execution.

Isolated, away from all this, Jeff sits beside his mother and across from his eldest, at the foot of his second son's bedside. He watches the monitor with John's vitals instead of watching his son directly. It seems easier. His mother's attention is entirely occupied by her grandson, but Scott keeps stealing glances in his father's direction, hopeful, quietly expectant, but not yet presumptuous enough to break the silence in the room. For his part, Jeff hopes that Scott doesn't notice just how carefully he avoids even looking at John.

There's a bottle of water on the floor by his feet and he reaches down for it. Unscrews the cap, drains about half of it in one go, and heaves a sigh before clearing his throat. This gets Scott's attention immediately and he drops into the chair on the other side of the bed, attentive. His mother takes a moment longer, adjusting her grip on John's fingers and then shifting in her chair, to reach out and put her other hand gently on Jeff's knee, a comforting little pat and a soft smile.

He takes a deep breath and looks up, glancing between Scott and his mother, before his gaze finally settles on John, and stays there. He's told this story once already, not really all that long ago, because he'd told it to John. And maybe it's fitting that John's here, even if he's not awake or aware enough to hear it again. It was a story without an ending, the first time around, but the beginning is the same.

It's intensely selfish even to think it, but it would be easier to tell this story if his son were elsewhere.

But there's nowhere else his mother and his eldest want to be, and Jeff's time and availability are about to become severely limited. He'll be called away, sooner than later, to deal with the aftermath of his son's loss, EOS' sacrifice and the success of his own grand, vainglorious master plan. It's here or nowhere; now or never. If he doesn't take this chance, then Scott and Grandma Tracy will hear what he needs to tell them from someone else.

God forbid they hear it from John.

So.

He begins abruptly, without any preamble, "After the war, I was involved with a GDF project, under the code name 'Heavenward'."


	13. warning tremors

No one knows why Alan sleeps on the floor. He's done it since he was a toddler and apparently the habit just never got broken. Sometimes he starts out in his bed, sometimes he just crashes on the carpet in the corner of his room. Even in an executive suite in a five star hotel, Alan finds his way to the floor, and this is where he is now, sprawled on his back and staring up at the ceiling. Not sleeping.

It's late. Long past midnight in Zurich, though he feels strange and caught out of time. He's been listening to the white noise of the shower for coming up forty-five minutes. Alan's uniform is crumpled on an armchair in the corner of the room, and he's just changed into a pair of pajamas, part of a package delivered by the hotel's concierge. The man had been particularly solicitous, considering that Tracy Industries has just booked a dozen rooms and requested personalized service for Messrs Virgil and Alan Tracy, currently occupying the hotel's second most expensive suite. Alan had been grateful and creeped out in approximately equal measure.

So there are several changes of clothes in the appropriate sizes, assorted snacks and drinks, and contact numbers for the hospital, as well as for several members of TI staff. There's also a note from Kyrano, presumably responsible for all this, which Alan doesn't bother to read, and leaves for Virgil instead. He's deposited this, along a pair of shorts, sweats and a t-shirt just inside the bathroom door for whenever Virgil gets done in the shower. If Virgil had noticed, he hadn't done anything to acknowledge his little brother.

Alan's not sure if he might not prefer it that way.

Virgil's got questions. They hang in the air around him, unasked. Alan's got the answers, probably, at least some of them. Probably even more of them than most people, at this point. But he hopes if he can manage to fall asleep before Virgil gets out of the shower, he'll be spared from having to engage with his brother. He's not sure if he's really up for an interrogation. Currently, he's skirting carefully below the radar, coasting on the broad assumption that he's just as in the dark as everyone else is, regarding just where their father's been and what he's been doing, and the specifics of what's happened to John.

But Virgil's clever. And beyond that, Alan sometimes gets the sense about the middle child that he's developed a sort of precognition for secrets; a robust mental index of his brothers' assorted tics and quirks and tells. Virgil's going to know he knows _something_. It's not that Alan begrudges him the answers. It's just that Alan's answers aren't _for_ Virgil. Alan's answers are for John, when he wants them, because one day he _will_ want them.

It's just not going to be any time soon.

The shower turns off, and he stops himself from wandering any further down that line of thought. The answers are heavy and hard enough without picking them up and turning them over and over in his head.

So Alan sighs, strains his ears to hear Virgil moving around the bathroom and tries to work out how this interaction is going to go. He's wide awake. It's not because he's not tired, because he is. The rush of adrenaline and the fear of losing John and the stress of waiting for him to get safely through surgery—it's all taken its toll. He knows Virgil's tired too, in all the exact same ways, on top of the physical exhaustion of having a full day's work behind him. It's possible his brother won't have the energy to talk. It's possible that Virgil will just go straight to bed.

But then, the bathroom door opens. And softly, almost immediately, "Hey, Alan?"

So much for that, then.

"Hey, Virg." Alan lifts an arm and waves vaguely from the floor beside the king bed in the center of the room. He can't see his brother, but he can hear him moving around. "Sure you're clean?" he asks dryly.

The answering chuckle is faint, a little bit forced. Almost embarrassed. "Heh. Yeah, sorry. Kinda got caught in my own head. I mean, there'll still be hot water, if you wanted—"

"Nah, I'm good."

"You say so."

Virgil sits down at the far side of the bed with a groan and then very deliberately keels over, drops himself heavily onto the pristine white duvet with a sigh. For a while he's just quiet, and Alan is, too. Alan keeps staring up at the ceiling, until he catches the sound of his brother, shifting to the edge of the bed. He looks up at Virgil, peering right back down at him, chin rested on folded arms and wearing a more subdued expression than Alan was expecting. For a few moments they're both just staring at each other.

"You okay?"

And Alan might just surprise them both, being the one who asks the question. Because usually that's Virgil's job.

His big brother doesn't answer immediately, and rolls away from the edge of the mattress, so that Alan can't see him any longer. The silence stretches out for long enough that Alan starts to think he should sit up, when Virgil responds, "Hell, Allie. Are you?"

Alan's tempted to point out that he'd asked first, but it doesn't seem worth it. It's Virgil's job, anyway. And Virgil probably deserves to have at least one of his questions answered.

Lying on the plush carpet of a hotel room floor, in a strange city, long past midnight, with his father back from the dead and his lost brother found, Alan has to think about his answer.

"I guess I'm waiting to be not-okay," he says, after a long minute of tallying up everything there is to be not-okay about. It seems like the best way to put it. Because he's been expecting all of it to just _hit_ him, and it just _hasn_ _'t_ yet. There've been warning tremors. Little jolts and bursts of emotion. There've been a few moments when he's flirted with breaking down, breaking apart, but whenever he hits the crest of the wave, everything just falls back and the swell diminishes. Tears will fill his eyes or he'll start to feel anxious and shaky, but he just never seems to fall past the tipping point. He's not sure if it's shock or weariness, or if he just can't snap himself out of the sort of one-step-behind-himself way of being. For now it seems like he's just going to keep coasting.

"Mm. Got an ETA on that?"

"You'll know when I know."

"We should probably try and coordinate, little brother, or I think we'll all just go like dominoes."

It's a little too real to be funny. Still, Alan finds himself cracking the sort of joke that Gordon would, if he were here, "…Five—four—three—two…" he trails off. The notion of anything bringing Scott down at this point seems starkly impossible. He's not sure he's ever seen his big brother this happy, even accounting for John's status .

A short silence, and then a throw pillow comes arcing off the top of the bed, lands squarely on Alan's face. And then, "Four and Five already down for the count, Allie. Seems like you're up next."

He puts the pillow beneath his head. "Seems like if I go, I'll be taking you down with me."

Another pause. "…yeah, maybe."

A little too real to be funny.

And Alan's not Gordon, he doesn't know how to correctly calibrate a joke to cut the tension, make Virgil relax. A forty-five minute shower is a pretty good indicator of tension, in Virgil. Long, dense silences. Maybe his big brother has some tells of his own. Maybe there's been enough lying in their family, and maybe hoarding the truth for esoteric, cowardly reasons isn't going to help anyone.

Maybe it's time to stop sleeping on the floor.

So he pulls himself up. Even with the carpet, it's probably not the best idea to be on the floor anyway, the hardness of it seems to be hitting all the pressure points in his limbs, wearied as they are with spent adrenaline. Virgil hasn't gotten beneath the blankets yet, lies fully clothed on top of the duvet, shoulders halfway propped up against the headboard. Alan tosses the throw pillow back at him, and climbs up on the bed beside his brother. It's king-sized, and compared to his usual preference it feels big and squishy and soft, and he has to shuffle around and curl up on his side before he's something that passes for comfortable. Virgil doesn't react, doesn't comment. Looking at his brother now, Alan can see the way his eyes are a little red-rimmed, the tiny, barely-there tic in the muscle of his jaw. He's visibly tired, and it's probably for the best that they're both here, both going to get some rest. Grandma, backed up by Scott, had been right. It's more important for Alan and Virgil to be rested, ready to go back in the morning. Things are about to start to change. They should both be prepared.

Right at the moment, Alan's a bit better prepared than Virgil is. _That_ needs to change. They're both going to need each other, and John's going to need them both even more.

"Virg?"

"Mm?"

They're both of them too old for bedtime stories. But Alan knows more about what's happened than anyone else, and Virgil probably knows the least. Maybe it would make them both feel better if they could reach an equilibrium.

So.

"I know what happened to John."


	14. belongs here least of all

Of all the places she doesn't belong, surely she belongs here least of all.

Kayo's room seems like a place that belongs only to its owner, and even for someone whose life has revolved around getting into places that she's not supposed to be, here more than anywhere else, Penelope feels like an intruder.

The walls are dark, though colourful, a deep teal near the ceiling shading through a sunset gold, down into a rich, rusty red. Kayo's bed is low to the floor, a low platform with a futon style mattress. The space is large, but minimally furnished. There's nothing like the carefully composed suite of furniture that fills Penelope's own bedroom; Kayo appears to make use of the walk-in closet almost exclusively, and there's nothing like a dresser or a wardrobe or a vanity. A set of shelves with books and assorted trinkets, another set with free weights and other workout equipment.

The wall of windows at the far side of the room has a low sill that runs along the bottom, and this has been populated with all manner of ceramic and terracotta vessels, and all of these are populated with little succulent gardens, all in hues of grayish green with occasional pops of jewel toned colour. A small table sits to the side, and this has a small collection of simple gardening implements, a tray full of cuttings. It's not a hobby Penelope would have imagined of Kayo, but there's something rather nice about the notion. Penelope's mother had loved gardening. Perhaps it might be something to talk about, one day. It's always been so difficult to make conversation with Kayo.

It's midday on the island, but it's dark and quiet in Kayo's room, blinds drawn and the door closed. She's not sure why she's been brought here, exactly. Parker had been enlisted by Brains to help get Gordon down to the medical bay, and she hasn't seen him since. She wonders if he'll tell them all what's happened. She's not sure if she hopes so or not. For her part, she hadn't known what to do but just stay where she was, sitting alone in the back of the helicopter, with her head aching and her eyes still red, tired and lost and afraid.

And it hadn't been Parker who'd come to get her, but Kayo. And Penelope had been a little too numb and disconnected to do anything but allow herself to be led up into the hangar bay, up an elevator and into the house proper, and then all the way back into the wing of the villa where the bedrooms are.

And now she's just been left here. And she's not sure how long much time has passed since Kayo's been gone. The only thing the younger woman had told her was to wait. So Penelope's waited. And now she's not sure how long she's been waiting, sat on the bed with her hands folded in her lap, feeling the smoothness of her skirt over her thighs, caught up in the strange sort of hazy vagueness that goes along with having worn herself out with crying.

With everything, really.

It's all been exhausting, really. Maybe that's why Kayo's left her here. Maybe her solitude is meant to be a kindness. She can hardly be blamed for wanting to lie down, curling up on her side with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped tight around her chest. The bodice of her dress is tight and confining, but she doesn't care, she doesn't intend to undress. She doesn't know for certain that Kayo won't be back, or that Parker won't come looking for her, but she decides she doesn't care if they do. The mattress is deep and soft and yielding and the room is quiet and dark and far from everyone and everything else. Even if she doesn't belong—doesn't _deserve_ to be here, there's no denying that the island is somewhere she's always felt safe, somewhere she can let go of everything that's happened. It doesn't take long before she feels safe enough to let her eyes fall closed, to allow her breathing slow and even out.

* * *

She sleeps for long enough that it's dark when she wakes.

When she does, Penelope finds that the zipper at the back of her dress has been halfway undone, that a blanket's been dropped over her. She pushes this back and pushes herself up, bleary-eyed and vaguely confused, before remembering where she is. The only light in the room is the low light from beneath the door of the ensuite bathroom, and there's a towel and a change of clothes—something of Kayo's, presumably—waiting on the low nightstand, a tacit suggestion.

She's still tired and disoriented enough that it's one she decides to take, instead of finding out what's going on, where everyone else is. Her eyes are dry and sore, her head aches slightly from a long sleep. Another twenty minutes to clean herself up and make sure she's properly awake won't matter, in the grand scheme of things.

She leaves her dress in the middle of the floor, a soft heap of fallen away white. Kayo's shower is all dark slate and live green bamboo, growing cheerfully on shelves and in little alcoves cut into the showerstall. A rainfall showerhead pours hot water to patter on the tiles beneath Penelope's feet. The blood on her skin finally washes away, but she scrubs at the place where it was for longer than she needs to. Sleep has taken the edge off her anxiety, and the heat and the warmth calm her further still. When she finishes and shuts the water off, in spite of everything, she feels a great deal better.

Kayo's left her a pair of yoga pants, a too-big t-shirt with a logo too faded to read, as she dresses in the darkness of the bedroom. Penelope towels her hair as dry as she can, considering the humidity on the island, and decides against a glance in the bathroom mirror. She knows she'll only see herself looking tired and vulnerable, exposed and off-kilter, wearing someone else's clothes in someone else's home.

Penelope can't recall offhand the last time she was in the upper part of the villa, and stepping out of Kayo's bedroom, she's briefly distracted by the view, the last glow of sunlight present in the sky but gone from the surface of the sea, far off and down below. The colours of sunset are beginning to fade into the darkness overhead. The villa is built into the high, craggy face of the island itself, and Penelope's always surprised by how easy it is to forget the sheer _scale_ of the place. She feels small in a way she never does, at home.

But perhaps that's something else.

Down the stairs into the villa proper, and it's eerie how quiet the place is. The lights are all dimmed and the space _would_ be silent, if it weren't for the sound of Gordon, snoring on one of the couches in the lounge.

The center of the villa has a gravitational pull about it. In spite of the fact that part of her wants to retreat back into solitude and safety, not to have to undertake this confession, there's something that draws her out of the hallway, and tentatively down the steps. The carpet is deep blue, plush beneath her bare feet, and she knows she doesn't make a sound as she approaches, doesn't make a sound as she kneels down, and then sits on the floor beside the yellow couch.

Gordon's asleep, back and shoulders against a heap of extra pillows, and the rest of him curled up around one of the island's smaller holocomms. His good hand cradles the comm against his stomach, while his left hand has been carefully bandaged, and by some habit or instinct he's kept this up, across his chest and against his shoulder, above the level of his heart. He looks a great deal better, too, although there's enough light that she can see the totality of what's happened to him, and it makes her ache with sympathy, with guilt. The place where he's been backhanded across the face, hard enough for a blue-black bruise to blossom high across his cheek, darkening the hollow underneath his right eye. Contusions on his throat, four points of purple bruising. And his hand, of course, though she can't look directly at it, even bandaged. She thinks about the scar he's going to have on his finger and how it's always going to be a reminder of what she allowed to happen to him.

Despite her careful, deliberate stillness, something about her presence must trip some deeply ingrained instinct of his, because he stirs, quite suddenly, and the snoring abruptly stops. His eyes snap open and take an almost alarmingly short time to find her, to fix her in place beneath those bright, eternally sunlit brown eyes.

And he smiles, even as she finds herself wanting to run away again, and hating the fact that he would smile at her. Penelope shakes her head before he can speak, and asks, despairing, "Why do you always have to be so happy to see me?"

And he _laughs_ , worse even than the smiling, and shifts himself awkwardly, effortfully, to sit up. He clears his throat, but his voice remains soft as he challenges, "Take a wild guess, Penelope. C'mon."

This brings a flush of heat to her cheeks, even as she pulls her knees up tight against her chest, wraps her arms around them and knots herself up, locks herself away from any attempt he might make to get in. She has to swallow past a lump in her throat and it takes an enormous amount of fortitude to keep her voice even as she tells him, "I told you—I _tried_ to tell you—that you shouldn't think of…of me…the way you do."

"Why not?" A beat, and then with a note of defiance. "No one's ever exactly had a lotta luck, telling me how I should feel about things." She hears him move closer and then there's a soft, gentle touch, and he pulls her still-damp hair back from her face. "Pen?"

Penelope stubbornly keeps her gaze fixed on a patch of the floor at her feet, and by sheer force of will manages to prevent any tears from welling up in her eyes again. "You've no idea what I've done."

"I don't care about what you've done, I care about you."

This is sort of thing Gordon just _says_ , as though he doesn't know what sort of impact it makes, how it shatters against her shields and sends shards and fragments of emotional shrapnel tearing all through her. And he's being frightfully, insistently stupid, and he doesn't _understand_. So Penelope has no choice but to try and tell him.

"I knew about your father. All these years, and I knew the whole time."

"Yeah, I got that one. Sounds more like a problem I gotta have with _him_ , though, Pen."

"I sent John after him, when I—when…when your father went off the radar. When I lost track of him. I should've told you then."

There's a long silence and it might just be that his voice is slightly husky when he says, "Well. Two hours ago, my Dad called me to tell me that my big brother's gonna be okay, and that they're _both_ gonna come home, someday soon. And I don't know about all the rest of it, but the hell with it, anyway. So…so I dunno, Penelope, it seems like it might've been a good damn call, if you ask me."

It's impossible to tell with Gordon when he's just being deliberately stubborn and contrary, and especially impossible when she isn't actually making eye contact. So she takes a deep breath and lifts her face, sets her jaw and turns to look up at him, tells herself that she can meet his gaze evenly and easily and not crack or crumble when she tells him the worst of the truth. "I—"

He's left-handed, and she knows that, but his left hand is obviously out of commission, so it's his right that catches her face, maybe just a little clumsily. The skin of his palm is warm against her jaw, and his thumb presses lightly against her lips, steals the breath right out of her, and the words along with it. "Pen? Please, quit trying to come up with reasons for me to be mad at you, because I'm not and I'm not gonna be. I don't _want_ to be. Now, c'mere."

She doesn't want to—or, she doesn't think she should. This was a mistake, she shouldn't have come here. She should've gone to find Parker and told him to take her away from here; told him that she wanted to disappear, to go _home_ —because she doesn't belong in this place. Doesn't belong with _him_. But his hand falls to take her elbow and give a gentle tug, and before she's quite realized it, she's off the floor and sat beside him, and he's threaded his fingers through hers.

And she knows what she has to tell him, but she doesn't know what to say. The truth is there, but not the words to tell it, and so she just stays silent; still and tense and sorry, just so sorry for everything that's happened.

Her silence stretches the moments between them, so it seems like longer than it really is before he clears his throat and says, softly, "Hey. Penny?"

She realizes just a fraction of an instant too late why he wants her to look up again, because they've been here before. She's been at the edge of an abyss, at the end of the line, and helpless and hopeless and with no one else to turn to but him. Both times this has happened before, it's been because she's put him in danger, dragged him along behind her and into trouble. There's a pattern here, and this is predictable.

So it's not a surprise when he kisses her.

Part of her expects it; knows that he's just picking up the latter half of something abbreviated, a long ago moment between them. Months and months back, and she still remembers the way he'd taken her hand when she'd turned towards him, and the words _now or never_. Only it hadn't been then, and it certainly hasn't been never, because she's kissed him twice now, and the second time not even twenty-four hours ago. He's only evening the score.

And it's awful how badly she just wants to give in. To let the tension fall away, the rigidity of her shoulders, her spine—to turn inward and allow herself just to be _held_ , because she knows more than anything else that he'd hold her, that he _wants_ to. He never seems to have the slightest difficulty sorting out what he wants to do from what he should do. He's done this because he loves her, is _in_ love with her, and he kisses her like that's just the only thing he wants in the entire world; just to be in love with her. His hand has come to rest against the curve of her neck, she can feel his thumb brush the point of her pulse, and she wonders if he's cheating, gauging her heart rate to measure her response. It's what she'd do.

So it breaks her heart, just a little, to close her fingers around his wrist and pull his hand away, to pull back and shake her head, denying him. Because it's not that _she_ doesn't want this; it's that _he_ shouldn't. She permits herself a moment of weakness and bows her forehead against Gordon's shoulder and he pulls her immediately, insistently close, with a soft shushing sound in her ear as the tears start up again. "You can't," she tells him, or tries to. "Gordon. Please— _please_ —you can't feel like this about me, you shouldn't."

"Why not?" He presses another kiss against her forehead and she lets him, can't seem to help softening further, as his hand rubs gently up and down her back, and he asks again, careful and patient and more adult than she's ever known him to be, "Penny, I can't understand if you won't tell me why. Talk to me, Pen, please. I hate seeing you like this. C'mon. Give a guy a break."

Well.

She probably owes him that, at least. Everything she's put him through, everything between them, everything he feels for her, and everything she wishes she could allow herself to feel in return. But it doesn't make the truth come any easier, as she takes a deep breath and lets it out as a shuddering sigh.

And then—

"I need you to know the truth about what I was doing in Bangkok."


	15. brought to an end

The first thing he knows, waking, is that he's not alone.

The second is just how close he came to never waking again.

And he remembers the way that had felt, so he keeps his eyes closed, stays still and silent, and tries to feel it again. It's important. He needs the reminder of just how fragile his existence is, just how lucky he is to be alive at all. He remembers the way things had started to get dark, first of all. The way the white light around him had dimmed, the stars themselves going dark and fading away. He'd expected to start to feel the cold of the void around him, but it had been the opposite, warmth creeping into his chest, into the palms of his hands. There'd been a strange sensation in his fingertips, curiously reminiscent of the way his magnetic bio-implants feel, maybe a mental echo of that same feeling.

John knows about hypoxia. Mostly because he knows how to watch for it in his brothers. He's seen Scott brought to the edge of it once or twice, because Scott will knowingly push that limit. He's seen it happen to Gordon, once, and improbably, because it's one of the things that scares Gordon more than anything else in the world. With Gordon it had been the result of a faulty gauge, because Gordon's vigilant about his O2. On Scott, the leading edge of oxygen deprivation manifests as irritability, impatience, combativeness. It can be hard to tell, with Scott. On Gordon it's confusion, vagueness, imprecision. It's easy to tell with Gordon.

For his own part, it's something almost tempting.

Because for John, apparently, it's a slowly dawning calm, something like peace. Something so far removed from the constant mental bombardment of his day-to-day existence that it had been almost like coming to the border of another country. A sharp separation of cognition and emotion. The awareness—acknowledgment, even—of the fact that he'd run out of air. Reading that big, glaring 0% on his oxygen meter for what felt like the hundredth time, the warning **!** flashing next to it, as though the significance wouldn't be clear. _Knowing_ that he was out of air. But _feeling_ that—well. If this was as bad as it got, then it could certainly be worse. As though he'd misjudged or miscalculated the actual severity of a gauge reading in the red. There'd been no pain, only a sort of heaviness, a weight to his limbs that reminded him of gravity, of going home. Slowness, then stillness. Darker still. A lack of urgency.

And maybe that's what was most chilling about the whole experience; the way he'd stopped fighting. The way a battle of wits had become a battle of wills, and his had ultimately been the lesser. He'd stared into the face of something implacable, made his case, and lost. The life had started to go out of him, and the fight along with it. And then heaviness, slowness, stillness. Calm. Peace. He'd closed his eyes against the glare of the sunlit side of the Earth below, had only meant it to be for a moment, and then his breathing had stuttered, stopped, and he hadn't been conscious to notice. And then—

If it hadn't been for Penny. If it hadn't been for Scott. If it hadn't been for Alan.

There's some moral calculation that needs to be done, regarding the question of whether sparing a life is the same as saving one. If she'd spared _him_ , then surely he'd saved _her_. Or had he only done the same in return? It's not clear whether or not that evens the score between them, whether they're starting with a blank slate. It's always going to be true, the way they'd began. But it doesn't need to be the way they continue.

Lying awake in his bunk, with a sort of peripheral awareness of the alarm due to ring and begin his day, John lets out a slow breath and allows himself to feel the fullness of what had happened. To feel the ache in his muscles after the exertion of resisting her; remembering swooping sensation of vertigo, when she'd grabbed him and nearly flung him out of orbit; the memory of that seductive, peaceful fall of darkness; the inexorable, crushing weight of gravity—that's what she's done. That's what's at stake. That's what he's forgiven her for. Because there _needs_ to be a blank slate between them, if this is going to work.

He opens his eyes at 0600 UTC aboard TB5, the dawn of new day, the first of a new reality. Metaphorically, if not literally. A threshold, anyway, a shift in the paradigm. Alone no longer.

So, sitting up, yawning, hearing the little whirr of a camera lens that means he's being watched. Pretending he hasn't been lying awake, meditating very seriously on the nature of his new partner and the relative probability of her attempting to murder him again. Swinging his long legs around to sit at the edge of his bed and looking down at the Earth below, as though checking it's still there. Given the possibility of his new partner taking control of his station and sending it rocketing out of LOE and into deep space, maybe a gesture that has a new significance.

And the beginning of a new habit, looking up, into a camera lens staring down at him, ringed around with white lights. Trying to read an expression in her silence, and offering a careful, deliberately considered smile, calibrated to be friendly, reassuring. And then, equally deliberate in his tone and choice of words, as far as the first thing he says to her, at the beginning of their first real day—

"Good morning, EOS."

There's a pause and another whirr of the camera, focusing, appraising. She's got every last iota of TB5's processing power at her disposal, and he wonders what exact social formula she's trying to calculate, that it could take her a moment to answer, "Good morning, John."

And the day begins.

* * *

The first thing he knows, waking, is that he's alone.

The second is that he'd wanted never to wake again, in a world without her.

He doesn't move, doesn't open his eyes. He becomes aware of his breathing and it comes with a little more effort, now that he can feel the pain in his chest; the dull sting of stitches beneath bandages, taped to his skin. His hands at his sides are limp and heavy against soft cotton blankets, there's a plasticky paper bracelet cinched around his left wrist. An IV pinches and tugs against his forearm, dripping cold into him like the death that isn't coming. It's the only reason he can feel the contrasting warmth of the hand clasping his fingers, though he doesn't know who this belongs to, and doesn't care. There's only one person who matters, and she's gone.

His hands are bruised, and his fingertips too, from beating and clawing at the bulkhead door of the sealed sector of Heavenward's gravity ring. His throat is raw, strained from the way he'd yelled at her, screamed and pleaded and begged for her to listen, though his voice had gone ignored. His eyes, even closed, still sting. After she'd gone, he'd wept until he couldn't see, couldn't _breathe_ —until shortness of breath and the seizing swell of high emotion had caused his heart to fall out of the appropriate rhythm, to flutter and falter and fail.

There'd been no calm, no peace, there'd only been pain. Worse than he'd ever imagined, even after losing his mother, after seeming to lose his father. Worse than dying, and he knows about dying. In her absence, it had been the last thing he'd thought he could hope for.

EOS hasn't died, she's just gone.

For some reason it doesn't seem to be enough just to know it for the truth; for some reason the fact just keeps repeating itself, over and over and over, iterative, and worse every time.

She's gone, and he's failed her.

She's gone, and he won't ever hear her voice again.

She's gone, and the last thing she'd said was that she'd loved him, and that she always would, only that isn't true, can't be true. She was finite, and every part of her—including her concept of love, whatever the word love had meant to her— is just _gone_ now, brought to an end.

She's gone, and he had loved her, more than anyone or anything, more than he'd known how to explain, more than he'd known was even possible, and yet he'd never actually said, never thought to tell her so.

She's gone, and she was the only thing keeping him together.

And there's no way anyone could know that. Coming back around, waking with as close to full-possession of his faculties as he's been since it happened—no one knows that he feels the ache in his hands and his throat and his heart with immediacy. It feels like it was only moments ago that he lost his partner, his friend. That in his desperation to hold onto her, he keeps playing her last words over and over again in his head, and the cruelty of her final truth is enough that it undoes him completely.

So there's nothing he can really do, in his own right, other than come apart.

Because if she's gone, even with someone's hand clasping his fingers; even with the bulk of someone else's presence in the chair beside the bed—even with his brothers beside him, if EOS is gone, then John _must_ be alone.

On his first day waking without her, he's alone with Virgil and Alan. The two members of his family most dissimilar in appearance, and John can't be bothered to tell them apart, even as he gives in to consciousness, and the tearing agony of grief that goes with it. Can't tell whose shoulder he breaks down against, whose hand drags its knuckles up and down his spine, whose voice it is in his ear trying to convince him to calm down, consoling and comforting and ultimately failing to make the slightest difference. The initial numbness cedes to pain so sharp and deep that it cuts a chasm between John and his family, remakes them into strangers who don't know who he is or understand what he's been through.

And they'll try. They'll do everything they're supposed to, they'll do the best that they can, all of them. All they want to do is help, none of them want to watch their brother go through this, any of them would do whatever it took to spare him.

But it won't matter. And it'll be a long, long time before anyone gets through.


	16. SUMMARY OF PATIENT DISCHARGE

PATIENT NAME: JOHN GLENN TRACY  
GDF DESGINATION: TBIRD5, SOL - AR7756-486C  
SETTING DISCHARGED FROM: GDF SPACE MEDICINE FACILITY  
SETTING DISCHARGED TO: Home / Care of personal physician  
ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: Dr. Kenji Shimada  
CONSULTANTS: Dr. Simone Rochat, University Hospital, Zurich, Dr. Abigail Ryerson, Psychologist  
DATE OF ADMISSION: 08/14/2060  
DATE OF DISCHARGE: 08/19/2060  
DISCHARGE DIAGNOSIS:  
\- Infective Endocarditis, related to pacemaker placement  
\- Suspected PTSD  
DISCHARGE MEDICATIONS:  
Penicillin G - 5-24 million units/day IV divided q4-6hr  
Gentamicin - 3-5 mg/kg/day IV/IM divided q8hr

PROCEDURES: Cardiac Lead / Implanted Cardiac Device extraction, performed by Dr. Simone Rochat (see attached surgical report)  
COMPLICATIONS: None

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS: 27-year-old male with no previous history of heart disease presented to SMF ER, unconscious and in acute cardiac distress.

HOSPITAL COURSE AND TREATMENT: Diagnostic imaging confirmed incorrect placement of ICD/associated cardiac leads, indicated presence of myocardial scarring at lead implantation sites. Blood cultures indicated presence of infection. A cardiac consultation was ordered (consultant: Dr. Simone Rochat). Patient was admitted to the hospital and surgery undertaken to remove ICD, procedure was successful and uncomplicated, tissue cultures identified and course of IV antibiotics initiated.

LABORATORY DATA: See attached

PAST MEDICAL HISTORY: Recently treated at this facility for an isolated case of malaria. No history of heart disorder that would necessitate a pacemaker or ICD of any kind.

MEDICATIONS PRIOR TO ADMISSION: Patient was taking digoxin twice daily for management of recurrent tachycardia related to myocardial scarring.

CONDITION ON DISCHARGE: Stable.

DISCHARGE STATUS: The patient is discharged home to care of personal physician, to complete a course of IV antibiotics. Regular blood tests required to ensure efficacy of antibiotics in resolving extant infection. Recommend psychiatric consult.


	17. denial

The boardroom is adjacent to his father's office, and the meeting starts in half an hour. It's a nice office. It's all leather and wood and glass and it looks like a little piece of the island, transplanted high above the Manhattan skyline. It hasn't changed from the last time Scott was here, only now he's no longer expected to take his father's place, because his father's back where he belongs. This is his father's office again, and this is the sort of detail that Scott keeps catching hold of, the sort that still brings a giddy thrill of gratitude burgeoning up from the heart of him, regardless of the reality outside of the office door.

A glance at his watch tells him that there's still a few more hours before Tracy-1 lands on the island, finally bringing John home, along with the rest of the family. A little less than a week of hospitalization, and he's been deemed well enough to be remanded to private care. A few more weeks of antibiotics. Quiet. Care. Rest. Family to look after him, people to talk to. In short, all the things Scott _should've_ ensured, the first time around.

Scott's in a three piece suit, navy blue. He wears it like it was made for him, which it was, perfectly, expertly tailored to compliment his height, his whip thin frame. A grey silk tie picks up the threads of silver at his temples. He looks more like an adult than ever, but feels, irrepressibly, younger than he has in years. He stands at the window, using the reflection to surreptitiously watch his father, who's just exactly where he's supposed to be, seated comfortably behind his desk. Jeff's just taken a call from Lord Creighton-Ward, and Scott is waiting politely for this to come to a close. There's a meeting due to start in half an hour, not, of course, that it would start without them. And there's a conversation he and his father need to have.

It's going to be a conversation about his brother.

Because his brother's been through hell. His brother's been broken so utterly and completely that Scott sometimes has a hard time thinking about him. Sometimes—and _only_ sometimes, and it hasn't even been a week, so it's not like just _sometimes_ could even amount to very often at all—sometimes Scott tells himself he has more important things to think about than his brother, just to give himself a break.

He'd last seen John on Sunday, three days ago now. Virgil's birthday. It's an unfortunate truth about Virgil's birthday that it tends to get buffered and buffeted aside, swept away from proper celebration by the currents and tides of their family's frenetic day-to-day. It's almost a running joke, although it's rarely funny. Something always comes up on the fifteenth of August, and this year was no different. Virgil turned twenty-six in a hospital room, with his grief-stricken older brother for a birthday present, deathly ill, and all wrapped up in pain and anguish.

Scott had entered the room, late in the afternoon, and it had been him in the doorway; Virgil, sat in a chair on the far side of the hospital bed; and their brother, between them. John had been curled on his side with his back to the door, nestled in a tangle of disarrayed hospital blankets, still and silent. At first glance Scott taken him to be asleep—but approaching, it became apparent that Virgil was talking to him, leaning forward in his chair with his elbows resting on the edge of the bed and his head bowed close, speaking gently and carefully and in a softer voice than Scott had been able to hear. He'd stopped when Scott took the chair on the other side of the bed. He'd put a hand protectively on John's shoulder and quietly said something further, and only then had he lifted his gaze to meet his eldest brother's.

And there'd been something new in Virgil, then. Something fierce and ferocious and defiant, a titanic shift in attitude from the moment before, when there'd been only gentleness, compassion. And he'd asked, taut and terse, "Dad with you?"

Even just the mention of their father had been enough to send a bodily shudder through the brother between them, and to draw a low, anguished sound from the heart of him, something like strangled pain. It had been animal and alien and disconcerting, especially from John. And Scott hadn't entirely known what to make of it when Virgil's grip had tightened John's shoulder in response, and his eyes had flashed with something like anger.

The answer was no, that their father was back at the hotel, closeted in a meeting with TI higher-ups, and that Scott had come to let the rest of the family—Virgil and Alan and Grandma, and John, for as much as John was aware of anything—know that Dad was going to be heading to New York, back to the East Coast HQ. There was so much going on. So much needed to be managed; the press, first and foremost, clamouring for information about Jeff Tracy's reappearance. The GDF, intent on finding out just how their father had enacted project Heavenward. Tracy Industries itself, ready to be brought back beneath the helm of its owner and founder.

What he hadn't expected, upon his rather hesitant delivery of this news that their dad would be leaving Zurich for New York, was the way Virgil's jaw had clenched, and the way he'd said, almost _snarled_ , "Good. And he can _stay_ there."

Scott's still not sure what Virgil had meant by that.

Of course, it's not like there was a lot of ambiguity about it, but Scott can be remarkably dense when the mood takes him.

So Virgil's angry at their father.

Virgil's _right_ to be angry at their father.

Their father secretly undertook a massive, almost impossible task in the GDF's stead, for reasons that _sound_ noble and altruistic, but which Scott still has the sense to suspect had more to do with ego and power. Their father refused to accept the impossibility of said task, and instead made the mistake of allying himself with a war criminal in order to accomplish it. Their father had been betrayed. Their father faked his death. Their father spent three years in hiding with next to nothing, stubbornly trying to cobble together a workable solution to a billion dollar problem. And, when the game was up, when he'd been caught out in the middle of all of it, when John had finally run him down and cornered him—instead of coming home, Jefferson Tracy had bent Scott's little brother backwards over the altar of his ambitions, and carved the heart right out of him, in sacrifice to his goal.

Scott should probably be angry at his father, too.

He's not sure if it's cowardice or weakness or just plain old pedestrian denial that's the reason he isn't. Even if he can forgive Jeff for everything else, for all the bad choices and bad luck that led up to the end of it; Scott should be furious about what's happened to John. Maybe he is. Maybe it's why he's avoiding even the thought of his brother. He's here on John's behalf, anyway. He's here to help their father put everything right—and there's a _lot_ to put right. John had gone tearing across the world with very little regard to the lawfulness of what he was doing. Their father had had eight years to carefully construct a bunker of legal protection around his actions. John had nothing of the kind.

And so that's why Scott's here. It's on John's behalf that he's plunged back into the corporate half of his family's legacy. Their father's going to take care of it. Scott's going to help.

Behind him, as he watches his father's reflection in the glossy surface of the window, he hears the call come to a close, a series of short, brusque affirmations, and then—

"—Right. Thank you. I'll see you in London, Hugh."

Scott glances down from the window, shifting his posture into something casually inattentive, and pretends to be studiously examining his neatly trimmed fingernails, until his father clears his throat to get his attention. Scott makes sure to smile as he turns back into the room, careful not to betray the line of his thoughts.

His father's in dark, ascetic gray, his suit conservatively cut, double-breasted, with a crisp white shirt and a dark tie. He carries the gravitas of his attire with a sense of poise that Scott can't match. He rises behind his desk as Scott takes the seat in front of it, and goes to the liquor cabinet on the other side of the room. The smokey, possessive scent of whiskey fills the air. Ice cracks in crystal glasses. Jeff doesn't say anything as he pours two drinks, and when he returns, he sets a tumbler of Scotch in front of his son, who murmurs his thanks, and then Jeff takes the seat beside him, instead of behind his desk.

Scott wonders if his dad remembers the bottle of thirty-year-old McCallan that had gained three further years of age, sitting in the lower right hand drawer of his desk, back on the island. He wonders if John had known what he was doing, when he broke it open. It's always been hard to tell anything, with John, and that night it had been harder than ever. Jeff can't know how appropriate it is, how it parallels the last time Scott had been forced to really think about John.

His father raises his glass just slightly, just enough to give Scott pause as he catches the movement out of the corner of his eye.

"To your brother," he says, with uncharacteristic softness, when Scott looks over to match the gesture.

Hell. Maybe he _does_ know. That's the thing with Dad, and it's one of the things Scott had missed most about him. His dad just always _knows_.

"To you, sir," he answers, and means it with the parts of himself that haven't thought too hard about what his father has done.

The parts that have note the shadow of a grimace that pass across Jeff's features. His father nods a brief acknowledgment, and they drink.

And, just as Scott had anticipated—or had guessed, really, because unlike his father, he hadn't _known_ —the conversation starts with, "I do need to talk to you, Scott, about John."

Scott answers with the part of himself that doesn't think too hard about his brother. The part that only wants to hear the good news. "I hear he's doing much better. Starting to turn a corner, Grandma says." He sits a little too close to the edge of his chair, has to make a conscious effort to keep his posture somewhat casual, instead of sitting upright and eager and at attention. He takes another sip of his drink, maybe a little hastily. "John's tough," he adds, as an afterthought.

His father's expression is neutral, unreadable. The hand not holding his drink rests on the arm of his chair, the wedding band he still wears glints on the ring finger of his right hand. Late afternoon sunlight slants through the window of the office, and it catches the amber in his father's glass. "He's made it through a hell of an ordeal," his father says, after what seems like a little too long. He doesn't quite say it as though he's agreeing with Scott's assessment of his brother's resilience. "What I need to know, Scotty, before I can start to talk to people about just what he went through, is just how well he really handled it." There's a meaningful pause, and again with that softness in his father's voice, "Because you know it's true about your brother, that he hates for anyone to know when he's struggling. It's why things got so bad with him after your mother died."

This is going to feel like an indictment. Scott can already feel guilt starting to squirm in the pit of his stomach, and he attempts to douse the feeling with another swallow of Scotch. He has to clear his throat slightly before he can answer. "Well...you mean after the malaria, I guess. And everything else. I never should have let it all happen to him, and I know that, and I—"

His father cuts him off, absolves him with a dismissive flicker of his fingers. "I don't know that you could've done anything, Scott. It's neither here nor there at this point. What's done is done, and I'm mostly concerned with what led him into everything that followed."

Guilt twists like an augur in Scott's stomach. Everything that followed was dependent upon the fact that John had staked out the bounds of a massive blindspot in his family's view of him, and had managed to maintain the illusion of composure—control, cohesion, _coherence_ —when reality had rendered him fractured, frantic and desperate, and delusional on the point that he could find, retrieve, and ultimately save his soulmate from certain demise. Not for the first time, Scott wonders if it might all have gone easier on his brother, if he could've been convinced that EOS was a lost cause, if he could have come to understand that her loss was inevitable.

But then, it's not certain that Scott would be sitting high above Manhattan, drinking Scotch alongside his father, if that had been the case. Sometimes—usually the same sometimes when he carefully avoids thinking about just how deeply his brother must be hurting—he thinks that the cost was worth it, and that John's going to see that, one day.

He knows better than to say that, though.

What he _can_ say is what's true about the last time he'd been here, drinking his father's liquor and thinking hard about his brother and the state he was in. That's what his dad's asking, after all. Scott's had _this_ discussion before, too. Quietly, with Brains, pulled discreetly aside and away from anyone who might've overheard, or misconstrued what was being said. There'd been a particular way Brains had put it. A very careful choice of words, as though he hadn't wanted to make things sound quite as dire as the language he'd couched them in.

Scott has to concentrate to call up the specific memory, and he hopes he manages the same level of tact, as he begins to choose his words, halting, but deliberate, "There were...we were all watching him. Trying not to be obvious about it, but everyone...everyone was more or less aware that he was having a hard time. He'd been so sick—and Dad, I don't know if anyone would've told you, I don't know how well _he_ really remembers, but he was really—just, he was _godawful_ sick. He ran a fever that hit a hundred and five. Had three seizures. He was comatose for three days after that, and almost as soon as he came around, he got fucking _kidnapped_." He realizes what he's said the instant after he says it and a flush of heat rises in his cheeks immediately. "Sir. Sorry, Dad, pardon my language, it's just—"

"No, I understand. What do you mean by a hard time?"

Scott shifts uncomfortably, and finishes his drink. He notices, more than a little self-consciously, that his father's barely touched his own. But there's nothing for it now. Father knows best, anyway. He'd needed a drink, maybe, as a catalyst for the honesty necessary to talk about his brother. "Well, the words 'post-traumatic' might've been used. Not wrongly, I don't think. He didn't—John didn't want to cop to that. He said that, specifically, that if he admitted to PTSD, then he'd use it to cover up grief. It would've explained a lot, though, about the way he was acting, before he left."

"Hm."

It's nothing much, just a small, considered little sound, and indication that Scott should continue. The ice in his glass has barely had time to melt, and it slides and clinks softly against the side of the tumbler as Scott tilts it slowly back and forward. He looks at this in lieu of looking at his father, as he goes on, "It's hard to sort out what was what, exactly, with everything that had happened to him, between the stress and the trauma and what he had to be planning...he seemed different, maybe, by the time we got home. Forgetful, sometimes. Less focused, I guess. Distant. Cagey."

"Would you say it's possible he wasn't in his right mind?"

Scott can be remarkably dense, when he wants to be.

And so the question drops, sudden, like lead shot into the pit of his stomach. He'd expected that his father would want to talk about John. He knows what the meeting in half an hour—twenty minutes, now—is going to be about. Knows it's going to be a meeting with lawyers—but there hasn't been a meeting he's been to, since accompanying his father to New York that hasn't had lawyers present in _some_ capacity. He'd expected to talk about John, because he'd known this meeting was going to be _about_ John, and about what John had done, while he'd been gone. What the repercussions were going to be. The reasons his father would ask a question like that.

Scott's answer comes after a moment short enough that it still _seems_ immediate—and it's instinctive, a flat denial in his brother's defense. "No. I mean...no, sir. Dad. No." He feels it, when his father fixes him with a serious, evaluating stare, and his voice starts to run away from him, as he continues, "I mean, I think...I think that's overstating it. He'd just been through such a hell of a lot, was all it was, really. He just needed time, and he didn't get it. He would've gotten better if he'd just gotten some time. That's...I-I mean, that's my fault." He swallows, hard, and reiterates, "Dad, he's not crazy. He's just—he'd been hurt and he was about to lose something important, and he was scared, and he needed more help than I knew how to give him. And when I thought I could trust him to take care of himself, he bolted. I should've known better. I should've done more for him. I guess maybe I'm trying to make up for it, now."

Beside him, his father shifts in his chair. The ice moves in his glass, chimes softly against the sides, but he continues not to drink. Scott continues to feel embarrassed about how quickly his own glass had emptied, liquor to wash away his nervousness, to dull the sharp edges of his thoughts. It seems almost non-sequitur when his father says, "I appreciate that you're here, Scott. But I'm starting to wonder if it might not be better if you went home."

This is alarming. This has Scott sit bolt upright in his chair, searching for the reasons why his father might want to send him away, trying to work out what transgression he must've committed, that his father wouldn't want him here any longer. "Dad, I—"

"Not because you haven't been valuable to me. And not because I don't want you here." Jeff dismisses his son's fears brusquely, without a great deal of warmth. "But because this is about your brother, and the things he's done. I'll tell you now, Scott, nothing's going to happen to him. What he's been through—he's done so much, and _lost_ so much—it's more than anyone will ever understand. No one's going to take him away, no one's going to punish him. No one's going to do anything to your brother, not the GDF, not the World Council, _no one_. I won't permit it. But the means to that end—" And now his father pauses, exhales a slow sigh, and drinks. Drains half his glass, while Scott watches, intent. "—it's going to be ugly, Scott. I'm going to leverage money and power and influence, I'm going to pull strings and cut deals and do all of the dubiously ethical things that get done, in situations like this."

"I understand that."

Jeff glances at his watch, and then jerks a thumb over his shoulder, towards the office door, and the boardroom that waits beyond. "In fifteen minutes, I'm going to go through that door, and a dozen highly intelligent—highly _paid_ —attorneys are going to try to convince me of the value of having your little brother declared insane. Legally and mentally incompetent to the repercussions of his actions. None of them know John, but they know the details of who he is and what he's done, probably better than _he_ does, at this point. They will render your brother in terms that make him sound like a madman and a criminal. They will make an _excellent_ case. They may not even actually be _wrong_. They will propose an easier, gentler alternative to a protracted legal battle, and I will be tempted to take it."

Scott almost scoffs at this, at the audacity of it. The things lawyers will say. "John's not crazy."

"No? I wonder. Crazy's an ugly word for it, and not the legal term. PTSD, you said. That's not hard to believe. Would you swear to it, if it were his sake? Even if you wouldn't, there's more than that. Three days in a coma. Neurological sequelae related to cerebral malaria, actual, physical damage to his brain. I _do_ know a thing or two about malaria, Scott. A demonstrable history of complicated grief and the prospect of terrible loss. When your mother died, he _stopped speaking_. He was hospitalized because we couldn't get him to eat. There's plenty there to work with. It's not difficult to make the case."

Scott's glad he has a chair, because he's pretty sure the floor's fallen out from under him, and it's a long, long way to the ground. Maybe it's the Scotch that's causing the sudden sense of vertigo, the way his palms have grown warm and his mouth has gone dry. He can't think of anything to do but repeat, less certain now, "John's not crazy."

As though his father could make it true.

"I know."

And maybe he can.

For the first time, with the late afternoon sunlight growing ruddy as sunset approaches, Scott gets a glimpse of the depth of the sadness in his father, the remorse. The office around them is empty and silent, and Scott feels a moment of deep, intense connection to the man sitting beside him, and knows in that instant that they both want the same thing. His father goes on, sober and sorrowful, "I think that might be the worst of it all—just how sane he is; how tightly he held onto the things he knows, and his ability to know them. Your brother is stronger than I can even comprehend, Scotty, and he deserves better than to be maligned and discredited by a plea of insanity. So we'll need to do it another way. It's just going to be a matter of working out what that is."

The way the tension goes out of him, it's like a line's been cut. Scott hadn't realized the way his limbs had all drawn taut, the way his spine had stiffened. Even here, just sitting with his father, talking frankly about the state his brother's in—it's hard. And his dad, in just the way he always does, knows that, and gives him a way out.

"You've never wanted to be part of this side of things, Scott. I've never asked you to be, and I won't ask you now. It's going to be difficult and it's going to be ugly, and you don't need to be a part of it. You can go home. You _should_ go home. Take care of your brother, Scott. He needs you more than I do."

That might be true. Scott had gone to John's hospital room, four days ago now, with a decision as yet unmade. Their father was going to New York, and he'd left it to Scott to deliver that news. He'd also given Scott the option to come along, to take TB1 and follow afterward, across the Atlantic. And maybe if it had been Alan at John's bedside, instead of Virgil, Scott might have decided to stay. Maybe if Virgil had been radiating sorrow, instead of pure, molten fury, Scott would've felt like his presence was wanted—warranted, even. Maybe if his father hadn't asked, he never would've offered, would've known that his place was with his brothers—with John.

But instead he'd made his apologies, and said that he would be joining their father. Just for a little while, he'd said, just to make sure everything was under control. John was out of the woods. Alan and Virgil and Grandma had everything in hand. At the time they'd felt like reasons, but Scott realizes now that he might have been making excuses, at the same time as he'd said his goodbyes.

Because as hard as it is to think about his brother, it's harder still to be around him, and know that their father is the reason for what he's suffering, when all Scott wants is for his father to be the reason he has his brother back. He doesn't want to think about everything else.

So he can pretend that he's here for John's sake. He can pretend that his dad needs him, even if he says otherwise. He can make that same decision again, to be at his father's side, instead of his brother's. John's got Virgil and Alan, Grandma and Gordon, Kayo and Brains. John's got an entire family of people looking after him, and he'll be taken care of. He doesn't need Scott.

His _father_ has to stand in front of a roomful of lawyers, and tell them that—despite all readily available evidence to the contrary—his son is _not_ out of his mind, and that they're going to find a way to clear his name. Scott's been there before. Scott remembers wishing he didn't have to be there alone.

So Scott gets to his feet, wanders back over to the window. Makes use of the reflection again, as he pretends to stare out over the Manhattan skyline, and instead watches his father's image, watches to see if his dad changes at all, when he's no longer got his son by his side. Not appreciably. Doesn't matter. Scott's already made his choice. He doesn't turn as he says, "With due respect, sir, I think I can do more for him here than I can at home. If it's all the same to you, Dad, I'd like to stay. I know there's a lot that needs to be done for his sake. I'd like to help you make sure it gets done, however I can. Whatever it takes."

He hears ice chime against crystal again, as his father finishes his drink. He closes his eyes for a moment, against the light of the setting sun, and listens to his father behind him, with a soft little sigh before there's a grunt of effort, and he gets to his feet. He's not entirely expecting it, when there's the warmth of his father's hand on his shoulder, and a gentle, grateful squeeze, and the gratitude in the older man's voice is genuine, sincere, when he says, "Well, then I'll thank you, Scott. I'm glad you're here."

"Thanks, Dad. Me too."


	18. anger

His brother's dead, and their father killed him.

That isn't true.

But Virgil keeps hearing it in his head, singsong, like a nursery rhyme. _John_ _'s dying, John's dead. Dad came back and killed him._ He's been hearing it for a week now, ever since Scott had first called, to relay what he'd had from Alan. _Dad_ _'s alive, John's dying._

He'd been fully expecting John to die. Flying alone over the Pacific, he'd told himself that someone had to brace for that impact, because Scott was too caught up in the giddy impossibility of their father being alive, Alan couldn't be denied the possibility that he might manage to save his big brother's life, and no one even knew where the hell Gordon and Kayo were. Someone needed to be ready.

So Virgil got ready. John was dying, John would die, and then John would be dead.

That hadn't happened.

Instead, he'd spent four days in a GDF hospital, bereft of his partner and more or less incoherent with grief, and the truth about what he'd done and what had happened had started to come together.

John's story has been told around him, because he's been in no state to tell it on his own behalf. The people in his life put it together in bits and pieces, gathered their information from context, from the way he fit into the events that surrounded his disappearance. It was a story told secondhand, or from other perspectives, with parts still missing and questions still unanswered. Scott's had it from their father. Virgil's had it from Alan. Gordon's cobbled together a version of his own from both sides, plus whatever he's had from Penelope.

There's a version of the story that hasn't happened. There's a version of the story without their father in it, where John had retrieved EOS from the GDF's custody by whatever means were necessary, and done whatever it took to keep her safe, even if it took him out of the world entirely. There's a version where he disappeared, and died, and no one ever knew any better. There's a story in which their father returned to find his second son gone, in just the same manner as he'd left himself; and the punishment is almost adequate to the crime.

But in this version of the story, John's home. And their father isn't.

And, though he hasn't said it to Jeff's face, Virgil's deeply glad of the latter, for the sake of the former. As far as Virgil's concerned, his father's not welcome.

But he doesn't want to think about his father right now. His father's not here. And there's plenty to deal with in the wake of the damage he's done.

Virgil gets out of bed at seven every morning, to wake his brother up and coax him out of bed, for a dose of the antibiotics he needs dripped directly into his bloodstream, to clear up the infection in his heart. That's working. John's getting better, and it shows. Virgil's the one making sure John eats, stays hydrated, showers. Occasionally he keeps John company, though if he's honest, lately Virgil has to admit that he prefers to stick to the basics. Care and maintenance, nudging and prodding his brother through all the things he's too numb and depersonalized to deal with himself. Practical goals. Observable results.

But nothing Virgil does actually touches the pain his brother's in, because his brother's grieving. And grief in John is something deeper and darker and scarier than Virgil's ever understood. It's the sort of thing that makes him stop talking, stop eating, stop wanting to be alive. What's happening now is a window into their childhood, back when losing their mother had nearly killed John, too.

Suffice it to say, it's been a lot to handle.

So it's the end of a long day at the end of a long week, and Virgil's given himself permission to take a break. Not the first break, because there are plenty of people to spell him off. Grandma and Alan and Gordon and even Brains, in his way, have all been doing just the same as Virgil has, looking after John—but the first break where he's allowing himself some emotional distance, and deliberately _not_ thinking about his brother. He's retreated to the safest, quietest place he knows. There's always some part of Thunderbird 2 that could do with some attention, even if it ends up just being busywork.

And all he wants is to work on his 'bird for a while. Something private, quiet, meditative. Clear his head after the week his family's had, get back some little piece of normalcy, when every part of his day-to-day has been pulled inside out, turned into something else. He wants something to think of that isn't his brother or his father; a problem that's his and his alone, a problem he can actually _fix_.

He gets about twenty minutes, alone with his own problems, before he hears the sound of someone moving around the cargo hold. Another five, and he hears his brother climbing up the ladder into the cockpit.

At this rate, he's not even going to get to fix this one stupid, simple problem.

Because Gordon clears his throat and kicks him lightly in the knee, and honestly, he's lucky Virgil doesn't kick him right back.

Flat on his back beneath the console in the cockpit of TB2, Virgil doesn't look up from what he's doing. What he's doing is something he's been putting off ever since it first became a problem—careful, fiddly rewiring of the underside of his control panel, trying to ferret out a wire that lights up his "check engine light" any time the starboard aileron adjusts beyond thirty-degrees out of neutral. It's the second time he's had a chance to try and fix it, and he doesn't want to be interrupted.

Gordon's apparently dead set on interrupting him anyway, and he clears his throat, pointedly, and nudges Virgil's shin this time, with the toe of a bare foot. This is the very height of stupidity and is therefore what actually gets Virgil to break off in the middle of what he's working on, rather than the fact that his little brother is actively trying to get his attention.

So Virgil carefully reattaches the wires he'd undone, slides out from beneath the console, and sits up. Generally Gordon's the one who starts these conversations, but Virgil cuts him off before he can say anything, and his tone flat, irritated, as he snarls, " _What_?" A beat. "You know you shouldn't be down here without shoes on, you're gonna step on something sharp or drop something heavy or some other idiot thing like that. And that'll be the last damn thing I need."

Gordon probably doesn't deserve this kind of hostility, but Virgil doesn't especially care. And anyway his brother doesn't rise to it, remains annoyingly placid and calm as he answers, "Oh, right, the last damn thing _you_ need. Wouldn't be an issue for _me_ at all. Nah, c'mon. I'm being careful, V, chill out." At this, Gordon gestures with his left hand, as though demonstrating his point. "I'm acutely aware that I'm still delicate and fragile."

In spite of his irritation, Virgil feels the faintest twinge of guilt. It's John everyone's been focused on, but Gordon's picked up some damage of his own, though he still has far less to suffer than their older brother does. Gordon's always been astonishingly resistant to trauma, and apparently having one of his fingers lopped off by a maniac in Bangkok hasn't done any appreciable damage to his psyche. His left hand is still bandaged, but less than it had been, a sleeker downgrade from the bulky mess of bandages he'd been wearing when Brains had first patched him up. Tape and gauze and a hastily 3D-printed splint keep his finger still while it heals back into place, skin and nerves and bone knitting back together, the whole thing reattaching itself. Beyond this, there's the fading evidence of the places where he'd been hit in the face, bruised about the throat. Less obviously, invisibly, a few of his ribs are cracked, and he's only a week out from a moderate concussion. John's sick, but Gordon's injured, and it's easy to forget that.

Virgil's still a little short with him, as he prompts again, "Fine. What, Gordon? What do you want?"

Reticence isn't typical of Gordon, and so the few moments it takes him to shuffle his feet and clear his throat are particularly telling, indicative of something that might even be doubt, in the brother who tends most often to speak without thinking, and to say things he doesn't mean. Something about the set of his jaw and the way he straightens his posture should be the warning, but somehow Virgil misses the significance. Finally he clears his throat and gets right to the point.

"I want to go to London."

Dead air. Silence falls in TB2's cockpit. It's late in the afternoon, but none of the South Pacific sunshine makes it into the hangar, the lights glaring through TB2's forward ports are bright, sterile halogens. Virgil hasn't bothered starting up much more than the bare minimum of his 'bird's internal systems, just enough to power the forward console, enough power to light up the underside, so he can work. So it seems darker than it should be, seems like there's a shadow cast between them, in the one place where they've always worked together, regardless of whatever disasters are going on outside.

And abruptly Virgil doesn't want to be sitting on the ground for this discussion, doesn't want to be at any kind of disadvantage. So he gets to his feet, folds his arms across his chest, squares his shoulders. Answers the set of Gordon's jaw with a challenging lift of his chin. In short, does all the things he always does to remind Gordon that he's younger, smaller, and not nearly as stubborn, and if they get in an argument, it's not one Gordon will win. Virgil responds, appropriately scathing, "And just why would you wanna do a dumbass thing like that?"

This is where the exasperation belongs, this is where Gordon's supposed to spark up into defiance, defense against the shot Virgil's just taken. He doesn't. He's steady, even and calm as he answers, "Well, because I was the last one to find out when all this shit went down, and then I had to wait four damn days before John got to come home, and now it's been a whole fucking week, and I _still_ haven't gotten to see my dad in the flesh. Kinda getting a bit done with that whole state of affairs, if I'm honest. Dad's in London. So I wanna go to London."

Language aside, there's no heat in it. None of the temper Virgil might've been hoping for, none of Gordon's usual fire. He seems to have taken a page from Virgil's own playbook, and remains insistently even-keeled.

So Virgil supplies the temper instead, shakes his head and sighs as though it's the stupidest idea he's ever heard, and radiates disdain, contempt for the idiot who'd think it up. "No. No way. The Hood's still out there. You've already been fucked all to hell by tangling with him, you're in no kinda shape to travel."

His brother rubs at the back of his neck, a little awkwardly with his right hand. "I'm not exactly gonna be straining myself on a commercial flight to London. First class the whole way, I'll pop a couple codeine, it'll be fine."

"You're staying here; you're _supposed_ to stay here. Those are Kayo's orders, not mine."

"Yeah, well, I cleared it with Kayo already."

"Bullshit."

Gordon shrugs. "Man, call and ask her, I don't care if you don't believe me. If she thought it was dangerous, I wouldn't do it, but she doesn't, so I'm gonna. It's not like I need your permission, Virg—what I _do_ need is a lift to the mainland, I'm still not clear to fly myself anywhere. But it's starting to get pretty obvious that I'm not gonna get one from _you_ , so forget it. That's fine. Just…consider this a heads up, I guess. When Alan gets outta bed, I'll work it out with him."

"Gordon, you're not _going anywhere_."

This was never going to work, the result of the statement was never going to be Gordon going "oh, okay then, clearly I was mistaken" and dropping the matter. But that's not actually Virgil's objective, facing off against his little brother. It's a very, very rare occasion when Virgil wants to start a fight, and there's really no one else available to start it with.

It's still not working. All he gets in response is a knowing, unimpressed sort of look—the sort that doesn't belong on _Gordon_ of all people—and he changes tactics and asks, "Why don't you want me to go?"

"We need you here."

"What for?"

"John needs—"

Gordon interrupts, "John barely even knows where he _is_ right now. There's four other people here, all fully capable—individually or as a unit—of looking after John. We're all tripping over each other and crowding him as it is. If John cared one way or the other about whether or not I stay, then that'd be different, but honestly, I don't think he'd even notice." There's a pause, reproachful. "And _you_ shouldn't be using him as an excuse, when we both know that's not what your _actual_ problem is."

"My actual problem," Virgil echoes, and he can sense the edge of the encounter, the upcoming brink in the conversation, the one there's still time to back away from. He doesn't. "You think what Dad did to our brother somehow _isn_ _'t_ my actual problem?"

Gordon shakes his head. "I think blaming Dad for _everything_ that happened to John is a cop-out, and you aren't helping John or anybody else by making Dad into a villain. It's not that simple, Virg, and I know you know that. You _want_ to be angry and I get that, I really do. But, like, I'm just saying—maybe you wanna be kinda careful, being angry about this."

It's funny, because Virgil's aware of the way their roles have reversed. He can hear himself in what Gordon's saying, knows that he's half the reason Gordon knows _to_ say these kinds of things, because they're the sorts of things that usually get said _to_ Gordon.

But it's hypocritical bullshit, that Gordon would try to frame this whole situation as though Virgil's pitching a tantrum, when the reason's Virgil's got to be angry are just _better_ than any of the reasons Gordon ever has. Gordon gets angry about things that are small and petty and stupid; random, pointless injustices, or complicated things he hasn't tried to actually understand. When Gordon gets angry, he's loud and obnoxious and obvious about it, he doesn't have the decency or the good sense to keep it to himself, to work his way through it like a rational adult. Invariably, when Gordon's angry, he decides to make it Virgil's problem.

Well. _Fine_.

"What the fuck do you think you're talking about, Gordon?" His hands clench into fists and he can feel the dam starting to burst, all the fury he's kept so carefully pent up is starting to come unbound. "What the hell could you _possibly_ know, when it comes to what I've got to be angry about? If you knew even _half_ of what I've been told about this whole fucked up situation, then you'd be just as pissed as I am. _More_ , probably."

"I know plenty." Gordon hasn't backed down, but he still hasn't been baited up into anger of his own. He shifts his weight and looks away for a moment, but his tone is still firm when he answers, "Virg, if I wanted to be mad about all this shit, you know I _would be_."

"You don't—"

"I know _you_ don't get to dictate how I should feel about Dad. Maybe I get where Scott's coming from, maybe I want to understand the reasons for what Dad's done, _before_ I decide that it was a hundred percent selfish and evil and that we should all hate him now. That's not gonna happen for me unless I get to sit down and actually talk to him. So, London. Because _you_ told Scott that you didn't think Dad should come home for a while. You told him it was for John's sake. And I think that might make you _kind of_ a liar, Virg. I _know_ it's really fucking unfair."

Virgil hadn't actually expected anybody to find out about that, a sort of quiet conversation he'd pulled Scott aside for, just before he'd taken Thunderbird 1 to follow their father to New York. It seems like a violation to find out that Gordon's done the exact same thing. "You've been talking to _Scott_ —"

This finally gets a flare of anger out of Gordon, and he interrupts again, vehemence building in his tone now, " _Yeah_ , I've been talking to Scott. And Dad, too, when he has time. Because despite the way _you_ _'re_ behaving, it's not actually a horrible transgression to want to talk to the rest of our family about what we're all going through. And they both deserve to know how John's doing."

Virgil scowls at that, folds his arms across his chest, and glares at his little brother. "Dad doesn't deserve to be anywhere _near_ John, and he sure as hell doesn't deserve to know how he's _doing_ , when what's happened to John is his goddamn fault. And _Scott_ —if Scott wants to know how John is, he can fucking well _come home_. He _should_ _'ve_ come home. He knows what Dad's done and he's given him a pass. As far as I'm concerned, Scott's chosen his side."

Something in his tone or his choice of words makes Gordon flinch visibly, and for a moment the heat leaves his voice, and there's a little bit of pain, a little bit of pleading when he says, "Virg, there aren't _sides_ , for chrissakes. Don't talk like that, please, it's not gonna help. I _know_ nothing's okay right now. I know John's been _wrecked_ , and that's _awful_. It's hard to see him like this, I get that. I know Dad's done some shit and I know a lot of it was bad, and I know we've _all_ been hurt by it. But this is the kinda thing that could tear our whole damn family apart. Virgil, you don't wanna make that worse."

" _Try me_."

It's starting to get claustrophobic in here. Gordon's probably not blocking the hatch down to the cargo bay on purpose, and Virgil probably doesn't need to shoulder past him as he decides it's time to leave. He remembers a fraction of a second too late about his brother's fractured ribs, and general state of recent injury. He's not sure if it's guilt or denial that has him ignoring the choked, protesting little grunt of pain he gets in response. It's Gordon's own fault for looking for a fight and if he has any damn sense, he'll take the over-wing exit and vacate the hangar entirely.

Of course, Gordon's never been burdened with an abundance of any kind of sense, and despite busying himself with a panel on the side of Pod A, Virgil still hears Gordon's muttered cursing as he makes his way gingerly down the ladder into the hold. He's being an idiot, with his severed finger and his fractured ribs and his recent concussion and his stupid bare feet. As a backup plan, Virgil's got the module door wide open, a big glaring invitation for his brother to _leave_ , but he doesn't take it. Instead he approaches, pauses just outside of Virgil's reach and Virgil can hear it in the long silence that Gordon's trying to figure out what to say.

Virgil doesn't give him the chance, and rounds on him before he can start up, "The hell are you on about, anyway, trying to pull the whole rational adult routine all of a sudden, Gordon? You think I'm not entitled to be pissed off about the state of things right now? Because I think that'd make _you_ a fucking hypocrite. Pretty sure you spent the duration of this entire goddamn ordeal pitching a bitch fit about one fucking thing or the other. Pretty fucking sure that was _you_. Pretty sure you threw a tantrum in the middle of a mission while John was halfway dead of malaria. Pretty sure it was your melodramatic ass came and told me you hoped he'd been fucking kidnapped. Pretty sure you bit Kayo's head off after what fucking—"

And Virgil stammers to a halt.

And there's the sort of silence in which one might hear a penny drop.

Virgil and Gordon have a relationship that consists mostly of what goes unspoken. He couldn't point to the moment when they'd first clicked together, when they'd become the pair who could work on a basis of wordless nods and action and reaction. Gordon just always seems to do what Virgil expects him to do, and vice versa.

So it's possible that Gordon knows what he's about to say, possible that he's watched Virgil making the connection, like a circuit completing itself. It's possible that Virgil notices the sudden tension in his brother, the way his spine straightens, the rigidity in his shoulders as he draws himself up, just slightly.

"London."

There's a minute tic of Gordon's jaw. Even if Virgil weren't staring at him, something between them changes, and his voice is unmistakable in its warning. "Yeah, London."

"Dad's not the only person in London."

"Yeah, well. _Pretty sure_ there's about ten million people in London, Virgil."

What what goes unsaid is that Virgil should back off. That this is new territory, unbroken ground. That they haven't talked about this yet, the way they've talked about so many other things; the way they always have.

Gordon's got a tendency to say things he doesn't actually mean. Mostly it's the fact that he'll stretch a truth or gild a lily for dramatic effect. That perfect opening line to any given conversation is one of Gordon's biggest vices. So he'll say things he doesn't mean. Virgil's got a knack for knowing what _was_ meant.

Equally, he's got a knack for knowing what'll get to Gordon; what'll actually hurt him. The things he could say and doesn't, all the places where he knows his little brother's vulnerable. It's Virgil who everyone credits with understanding how best to deal with Gordon, and rightly so. Every thought Gordon has plays across his features in the instant he has it, his emotions tell immediately in his body language, and Virgil's long since learned to read him like a book.

Everything about his little brother right now radiates the warning; _Don_ _'t._

And he really should know better, but he's angry. He's so rarely angry, he doesn't know what to do with it. It's awful, muddled-up, directionless anger; anger about pain and injustice and at the ending of a story that had barely even started. Anger for his big brother, anger _at_ his father, anger that hasn't had anywhere to go, until his little brother had so conveniently presented a target.

"Pretty sure you only wanna fuck _one_ of them."

It's absolutely unsurprising when Gordon hits him. And Gordon's hit him before, but it's been _years_. Lately, Gordon mostly hits Kayo, and that's only if Kayo actually lets him, and only because Gordon and Kayo know it about one another; that sometimes throwing a punch is the only way to work through things. All blows struck between Kayo and Gordon are hundred percent consensual and expected.

What _is_ surprising is that it's a blow from the right—Gordon's left—and so it drops the both of them. Virgil, flat on his back with his head ringing, and Gordon to his knees, cradling his hand to his chest and swearing in the sort of way that would probably shave a few hours off their grandmother's lifespan, before she turned right around and cussed him out in language equal to or worse than his own.

It's a credit to both his left hook and his general durability that Gordon's back on his feet first, though out the corner of the eye that isn't already swelling shut, Virgil can see that there's already red staining the bandages on his hand, and that he staggers, gasps a little sharply when he stands. There's a moment between them, but only a moment, and Virgil's still a little too dazed to know what exactly it meant. He blinks, or thinks he does, but when his eyes open again, Gordon's gone. And, alone again with his own problems, tears start to well in his eyes and trail slowly across his skin.


	19. bargaining

The elevator to the medical bay is right off the hangar. Two floors down, just below Brains' main lab. Gordon is no stranger to the place; he's staggered, limped, and been carried over its threshold on more occasions than really merit counting. Since he's been home, it's been John who's down here three times daily, on a rigorous schedule of IV antibiotics.

So it's possible that Gordon shouldn't be surprised when the elevator doors open and John's there, because it's just that time of day. He still freezes up—right hand cinched tight around the wrist of his left, held above the level of his heart, and bleeding like nobody's business—like he's been caught at something.

Which, considering he's probably just busted his finger right back off his damn _hand_ by throwing a left-hook into Virgil's stupid _face_ —is more or less exactly the situation.

It's just about the worst feeling in the world to be caught by John, though. John absolutely does not need to be asked to deal with Gordon's very particular brand of idiotic bullshit, and yet, here they both are.

For a moment the pair of them are just staring at one another. Reflexively, Gordon goes through a quick visual inventory of his big brother's current state, a sort of emotional triage—John's upright, in the middle of the elevator, not leaning against the wall in the corner. Dressed, _actually_ dressed, in jeans and a pullover instead of sweats and a t-shirt, for what's probably the first time since he's been home, at least that Gordon's seen. He's got one of his sleeves already rolled up just past his elbow, to expose the catheter he'd left the hospital with, taped neatly to the inside of his arm. It's all getting to be routine. John's eyes are red-rimmed, but not bloodshot, and lately that's just par for the course anyway; brings out their pale sky-blue in a way that makes it almost as vivid as the artificial green of his contacts always was.

Gordon's almost tempted, just on a brief once-over of his older brother, to label today as maybe not as bad as the days that have gone before it. John's still a little vague, still possessed of that disconnected air that's become his new normal. But he doesn't seem as shattered, as locked inside himself as he has been, and he's apparently on his way to Brains' lab of his own volition. All good signs.

Still, Gordon's a little pained to realize that he's put the pieces of the encounter together about four or five times faster than his brother can. Gordon's figured out where John's going and what he's doing and why in the same span of time it takes John to realize that he hasn't actually arrived at his intended destination, and is in fact somewhere else entirely. There's a slowness to him, almost like a time delay. It's become possible to watch him process information; to watch the confused quirk of his eyebrows, as his eyes meet Gordon's for a moment, then flicker to the bright red flag of Gordon's left hand, and then over his shoulder to the hangar bay beyond.

And he's _still_ confused when he gets back to Gordon, though maybe that's understandable. His first question is remarkably stupid, for being one of the smartest people Gordon's ever known—

"—are you bleeding?"

Gordon's answer is probably in about the same league as stupidity goes, and he doesn't actually have an excuse.

"…yeeeah, little bit."

Gordon's always prided himself on his ability to improvise. The plan had originally been to get his ass down to the medical bay, yell for Brains, and hope he could get clear before Virgil turned up, but he's rapidly re-evaluating his options. John's here. John's in better shape than usual. John's giving Gordon a once-over of his own, and coming up with something that might be concern. He even goes so far as to ask, though it takes him a few seconds more to come up with another stupid question, "…are you okay?"

Well, no. But—

"Fine. Yeah, fine. Um. Hey, uh. Hey…John? Um, can I get a favour?" It's weird to ask John for a favour. No one's asked anything of John in what seems like basically forever. Which, in turn, makes it weird to remember that there was a point in time when John could be called upon at basically any hour of the day or night, for basically anything. He doesn't allow his brother the chance to decline. "—could you go, uh. Check on Virgil? He's in TB2's cargo hold."

"Virgil?"

"I punched him in the face."

He's only told the truth because it feels wrong to lie—at least, if it's not a little white lie, told for John's own sake, such as saying that he's fine when his hand hurts so badly he's actually a little light-headed—and he's not sure how John's going to take this one.

John takes a few moments to process the information.

This is the thing that cuts Gordon deepest, the thing he's not sure if anyone else actually notices—just how _dull_ grief makes their brother, how it's taken away all his essential sharpness, his quicksilver brilliance. The notion of John needing to actually _think_ about anything is a foreign concept. It makes him wonder how long it'll be before John starts to regain his edge. How long before he'll be the same as he was, or if he ever will be again. Maybe this is just who he is now.

John's portrait hangs on the wall upstairs. Gordon's had a hard time looking at it lately; how that long ago version of his brother looks so much clearer and brighter. So much more capable. Five years younger and in the best condition of his life, John's eyes in the portrait are the same clear blue as Scott and Alan's. His uniform fits like a glove, doesn't hang a little bit wrong at the shoulders, looks _right_. And more than that, looks _correct_. Lines of gold follow the contours of his collarbone, his gaze is set, determined. That slight, easy smile seems like a permanent fixture.

Gordon's not sure he can even imagine this version of John having anything to smile about, ever again. Not sure he can imagine his brother in a state that isn't slow and sad and tired. Even if today's better than the days that have gone before, it's hard not to think of the days ahead, and whether they're going to belong to a different person than the brother Gordon remembers.

But then, John surprises him. Not with a smile, it's still far too early for that, but with an unexpectedly astute question.

"Did you at least keep your thumb out?" Before Gordon can answer, or express his shock that _John_ knows to keep your thumb on the outside when punching somebody, John catches up to himself. "You _punched_ Virgil? Why?"

It's the question that probably should've come first, with a hint of that old incredulity, that old "you-did- _what_ " cadence of acute disbelief. It's also a question that he'd really prefer to have Virgil answer. Virgil deserves to have to tell their big brother just what exactly he'd said to get punched in the face.

Because Gordon hasn't actually had this conversation with anybody yet. About Penny. It's all still too new and strange and nothing's concrete and he hasn't actually got an _answer_ as to why he punched Virgil, except that Virgil was asking for it. Even just the thought of what Virgil had said sets his blood to boiling again, and he has to take a deep, steadying breath and exhale hard, past the pain and the fury and the fact that he'd trusted his big brother not to _go there_. But John's still looking at him, and so Gordon spits out the first thing that comes to mind. "Because I want to go to London."

It occurs to him a little too late that John probably doesn't know that their father's in London. That there's only one person who belongs in London, one person their family associates with. His stomach drops at the memory of the conversation he'd had with John—the reason John had broken his silence, taken himself out of exile; the conversation about Penelope.

It's bizarre to remember that he's talking to the same person, because the version of John who'd called him up out of the blue had been fractured and frantic, haunted and hunted and afraid of something; trying to warn somebody that Penelope was in trouble. That she needed to be stopped. Gordon has all the pieces of this particular puzzle, but he knows that John doesn't—can't possibly. Gordon's in a on secret with only three other people, about just what exactly had happened in Bangkok.

No one else knows that he'd been sent to Bangkok to stop Penelope from killing a man. That instead he'd wound up being the reason she had.

Gordon doesn't know if he could lie about that, if asked directly—but he'd just _have_ to, because he doesn't know if his big brother could sustain yet another failure. He doesn't know what it would do to John, but he knows it would be bad.

An older version of John would've made all those same connections, in the same one-two-three seconds of silence that pass like an absolute agony for Gordon, waiting for John to ask about how that had all shaken out.

This version of John just tilts his head slightly, frowns, and asks, "What's in London?"

It's a heartwrenching sort of relief. Gordon hedges, scuffs his feet, remembers about the fact that he's actively bleeding and in a degree of pain that's beginning to get dizzying, and continues hedging anyway, "Oh. Uh. Well, lots of stuff, Johnny. You know. That big Ferris Wheel. That big clock. Ben. Um. Big river. A lot of big things. The…the queen. Not sure how comparably she's sized against other queens. Uh—"

"Penny?

A pair of pale blue eyes look Gordon up and down as his shoulders drop slightly, and he shrugs and looks away and fails to lie to his big brother. "Yeah. Yeah, Penny." A beat. "Uh, and Dad, too, I guess."

"Oh."

Gordon's not sure how to read that single syllable. Not sure if it's a note of surprise or hurt or betrayal, or if John's meant anything by it at all, or if it maybe meant nothing, just a conversational placeholder; [reaction goes here]. It's so hard to get a read on John, these days, not that Gordon ever had a lot of luck in that department anyway. Abruptly he's ashamed for having made an assumption, for declaring to Virgil that John wouldn't notice or care if he left. It might be true, but it's not an excuse to leave, it's a reason to _stay_. He swallows a little guiltily, but before he can say that he won't go, that he'll stay if John wants him to, his big brother surprises him again.

"Do you love her?"

Well.

No one's ever asked. Not outright, anyway, though Kayo had kind of backed him into a corner about it. But no one's ever asked him straight to his face.

Not even Virgil, not even _her_. She'd just _known_ , because of course she would, and the only thing she's ever said in answer is that she's undeserving of the way he feels. As though that would make any kind of a difference, except to make him love her that much more, for her sadness, her solitude, for the way she's walled herself up and cut herself off and had to keep so many secrets. The way he's starting to realize that maybe these are all things she has in common with John. They've always had a funny sort of friendship between them, John and Penelope. Gordon's never really understood why until just now.

And it's not just the pain and the fact that he's gradually losing blood that make this conversation surreal. It's the fact that they're having it halfway inside an elevator. It's the fact that he's having it with _John_ , who's so far from who he is in Gordon's memory that it feels like he's talking to a stranger. It's the fact that even if he were talking to the version of John from the portrait upstairs, this just isn't a conversation that he'd ever _have_ with John. John's never been well-versed in affairs of the heart.

There are two years between John and Virgil, and another two years between Virgil and Gordon. But the four years between Gordon and John have never been anything like the four years between Scott and John. Between Scott and John, four years are just a technicality, a minor difference between two equally capable adults. Even though the four years between Gordon and John technically more like three—John will be twenty-eight in only two months, and Gordon will turn twenty-five in February—they feel like more of a yawning gulf.

Or they have before now, at least. It's not clear if something has changed about Gordon in the same way things have changed about John, but there seems to be a new sort of insight, a deeper sort of understanding in the way his brother looks at him now.

So Gordon manages a weak, quiet sort of chuckle before he answers, "Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, I really, really do."

"Have you told her that?"

Well.

No.

Not outright, anyway.

Not in so many words.

Not yet.

She knows, and he _knows_ she knows, it's not like he _needs_ to say.

And yet—

"…no. Uh, no, I guess not."

There's a lot Gordon doesn't know about his big brother. It's still too early for anyone to have really talked to John, about just what he's lost, and just what she meant to him. Gordon couldn't possibly know that his brother never managed to tell his soulmate that she was loved, and just how hard it is for him to trust that she knew.

All Gordon knows is that there's something impossibly, infinitely sad in John's voice when he finally does speak. Softly and with the tiniest catch, rare and real and regretful, John tells him, "It's not really the kind of thing you want to leave unsaid."

And without a further word, John steps past him, to go and check on Virgil.

* * *

Well, if nothing else is the same, it's at least always been John's job to tell him what to do.

So Gordon does as he's told.

A brief detour to the medbay, and then upstairs to wake Alan up and say goodbye to Grandma. Then the island to Sydney, Sydney to Heathrow, and yeah, maybe Virgil was right, maybe he's not actually in any kind of state for this much travel. Alan had pointed out that Chuck Yeager had first broken the sound barrier with broken ribs, in the X-1 in 1947, because that's the sort of thing Alan points out when he's being helpful. The implication is that Gordon should be able to handle speeds of a little over Mach-1 from the comfort of commercial first class.

Even in an aircraft as comfortably appointed as Fireflash, Mach-1 is still nothing to scoff at, and it's possible Gordon's doubled up on the painkillers he's been taking as a matter of course, though they've mostly worn off by the time he hits the tarmac in London, and he's going to need to pop a couple more. He's not sure of the date—he never is, after this kind of flight—but the way Fireflash works, crossing timezones at a rate of one an hour, he lands at the same time that he left, late in the evening.

His ride is waiting, right out front of the airport, a new and rather unexpected alliance, and his only contact as far as this surprise trip to London is concerned.

Parker holds a hand out and relieves Gordon of the single carry-on bag he's brought, at the same time as he opens FAB-1's back door. "H'all right, Master Gordon?" he inquires politely, though this is still strange to hear.

"Still in one piece, Parker." This is going to be a joke they share for a very long time to come. His ribs hurt worse than his hand right now, anyway. Gordon manages not to groan as he settles into FAB-1's backseat. "Anyone expecting me?"

Parker grins and winks. "No one at all. Ought to be quite a surprise for your father, I h'imagine."

"Here's hoping."

The car door closes. Gordon shuts his eyes. It's a bit of a white lie. It's not as though he's _not_ here to see his father. It's just become abundantly clear, with twelve hours of transatlantic flight behind him, he's mostly figured out that he's using his Dad as an excuse to see Penny, and not Penny as an excuse to see his Dad.

He's probably going to need to apologize to Virgil.

* * *

Her father keeps a London residence, but this is the first time he's been here in years. It's a sprawling, ten-thousand-square-foot flat, arrayed over three floors and including a sixth floor penthouse with a view of Hyde Park. This is notable in consideration of the fact that her father has a fairly severe neurosis about being in buildings with more than one storey. It's been appointed more in accordance with the modernity of Penelope's tastes than with her father's, as she tends to actually use the place.

Tonight she's using it to host an intimate, private gathering on her father's behalf—a welcome home party for Jefferson Tracy.

It's notable about Jefferson Tracy's welcome home party that it is not, actually, being held at his home. Penelope's not heard it stated explicitly, but she gathers that he's not exactly welcome there.

This party has a carefully curated guest list, the sort of people who wouldn't dare make such an observation. Penelope wonders how many of them are thinking it anyway.

It's going well. As parties go, this one runs like clockwork. Lady Penelope excels at the management of complex social scenarios, and this one has been engineered for the maximum possible benefit of its guest of honor. The food is exquisite and the wine is of a quality that her guests know to savour and not to overindulge. The company is charming and appropriately tactful. Business people, philanthropists, a generally like-minded collection of her father's social circle, with a smattering of people from her own, and a scant handful of trusted associates from Jeff Tracy's. The setting is intimate and homey and comfortable, and she's long practiced at making this place sparkle and scintillate and stimulate interesting social exchanges. It's been the venue for her own private parties for nearly three years now, ever since her father stopped throwing his own.

So while Penelope's the hostess, it's her father who's unexpectedly become the heart of the evening. She wouldn't have believed it possible, the degree to which he's actually engaged. Lord Hugh Creighton-Ward, who only weeks ago could barely bring himself to be out of sight of his panic room door, now stands in the larger of the two reception rooms, a glass of brandy in hand, laughing and joking in the company of the man Penelope had always held responsible for her father's downfall.

That this is perhaps not a view her father shares is something she'd never actually realized. That Jefferson Tracy's success might be of some personal significance to her father is something that had never occurred to her either. It's strange to see them together, and to realize that there's no hatred in her father, towards Jeff Tracy. That the hatred was always hers, and that even this has faded away from her, with time.

She wants to be happy, because this is a celebration. There are things worth celebrating—Scott Tracy stands at his father's elbow, and until tonight, Penelope hadn't realized just how much extra weight he was carrying in his father's stead. But with his father alive and his brother home, there's something _radiant_ about him. His smile is wider, his eyes brighten and crinkle at their corners, and when Jeff lays a hand on his shoulder, Scott looks as though nothing in the world could mean more. It makes Penelope realize just how much of what she'd perceived of his happiness had actually been a pale imitation of the joy, the gratitude in him now.

Earlier on, just before dinner, Scott had taken her aside. He'd wanted to thank her—not just for the party, but for everything. He hadn't specified just what exactly _everything_ encompassed, but he'd embraced her briefly and kissed her cheek and there'd been a slightly husky note in his voice when he'd told her how much it all meant, and that for his part, he didn't fault her for any of it. Again, Penelope hadn't been sure just what _any of it_ had included—the years' worth of lies, the theft of his brother, and the actual murder of a man all seem to be things she should be faulted for—but she'd chosen to assume his broad ignorance in the actual facts of the matter, and accepted his thanks as graciously as she could.

There's a rhythm to any and every social gathering, and the rhythm of parties like this one tends to slow and grow quiet, as it progresses towards its end. There's none of the frenzy of greeting newly arrived guests, there's none of the chess game required to shift the appropriate people into the appropriate locations to achieve the correct societal ratios per conversation, and nothing like the hard reset that occurs after dinner concludes and throws the entire assembly into chaos again. Just a certain sort of settling, a quality of shared introspection, a quietude that comes with contentment, supplied by good food and good company.

There are likely to be toasts, soon. Penelope can feel the shift in the currents of the conversations around her, how they begin to turn towards bigger grander ideas, towards deeply held ideals, towards important beliefs. Her father will have noticed, too. Part of her wants to wait and to watch, as he perceives the perfect moment, rises to his feet, and raises his glass. She wants to watch the room grow still around him, wants to watch as everyone waits to hear what he has to say. She knows he'll have been putting it together all evening, because that's what she always does. He'll have taken the same reading of the room that she has, and he'll appeal to all those big, grand ideas, those deeply held ideals, the importance of those beliefs. He'll say something to cherish and celebrate his guest of honour, his very dear friend. It will be beautiful and moving. It will be graciously, gratefully received. Scott will probably cry. Her eyes will go, as they always do, anywhere but to the stump of the severed finger on her father's right hand.

Penelope leaves the room before it can all happen.

She shouldn't. Really she shouldn't, it's a dreadful thing for a hostess to do. She doesn't even know why she wants to, only that the room had suddenly seemed full of strangers, and the pageantry of it all had started to become apparent, as though she'd noticed the flatness of the backdrop, or caught sight of a stage hand, darting behind a curtain. All the carefully calculated etiquette, all the unspoken rules and laws of raising a glass. Always stand. Put the glass down as you speak. The host must always be permitted to make the first toast. The recipient should remain seated. For however true and honest whatever her father says will be, it will be dressed up in formality. There'll be something false about it.

Somehow, for some reason, emptiness begins to howl inside her. Something's gone wrong, and where Penelope knows she should feel pride and joy and love and gratitude for her father, instead she feels something dark and terrible. She feels cut off and set apart and alone and wrong and strange. She feels as though this is the last place in the world she should be.

And so she runs. Her steps quicken away from the party, and she flees to the safety of her private sanctum.

The London flat is not only the place she entertains, when she's in London, it's the place she lives. The top floor, the penthouse, is hers and hers alone. Only one person will know to look for her there—her father probably wouldn't even realize where his daughter would retreat to—but Parker will. She hasn't seen Parker for most of the evening, but that's hardly out of the normal. He has an uncanny knack for going unnoticed when he wants to. And at these sorts of parties particularly he tends to gravitate to the kitchens, to take charge of brewing tea for the catering staff, making conversation and gossiping cheerfully. He has on occasion been known to sneak a bottle of scotch down to the lower floors, where it can be surreptitiously handed around and appreciatively imbibed. There's always the implication that this is done on the sly, but Parker's never once failed to have her permission, beforehand. What Parker learns about what the catering staff have overheard is always worth the price of a bottle of Scotch.

As she steps into the private elevator, Penelope's not certain if her evening is over. Likely not. There'll be some reason to go back downstairs, and probably soon. She just needs to retreat for a few minutes, to find quiet and solitude and solace, just for a little while. Her hand strays to her hair, twisted up in a sleek chignon, and she wants more than anything to pull it loose, let it fall over her shoulders. As a concession, she steps out of her heels and rolls her silk-stockinged feet against the hardwood parquet of the elevator floor. Her dress is simple, black, deceptively modest. The sleeves fall to her elbows, but are slashed open. The neckline is high, but stretches across her collarbone, exposes it as the most beautiful, elegant part of her. She's left her neck unadorned and bared her throat for the world to see, but two bright diamond earrings wink whenever she turns her head.

It's a short ride up to her private quarters, and she's certainly not expecting anyone to be waiting for her, when the doors chime softly open, and she turns.

And finds entirely the last person she expects.

There's no way in the world he could actually _be_ here—though this is obviously untrue, because he is anyway. If he's startled her, she hasn't startled him, and if she jumps and cries out a little at the sight of someone lurking in her private apartment, waiting for the elevator, is hardly as though he could blame her for her surprise.

Because Gordon's not supposed to _be_ here. Gordon's meant to be in the South Pacific, at home, where he belongs. Safe and secure and recovering from all the damage that's been done to him by her carelessness. Not here. Not back in her world, with all its contrived rules and duplicity, with all its essential lies. When he's only ever been honest with her, he surely doesn't belong here—and she doesn't deserve the little thrill, the little spark of wonder and joy and surprise that he would be here anyway. Somehow he just keeps turning up in the moments when she's most alone.

And he's tall (taller than her, at least) and handsome and blond and dumb and guileless and looking at her the way he always does, with that inimitable blend of awe and affection. That way he always manages to be glad to see her, even though she knows all the reasons he shouldn't be. That enduring esteem that she doesn't deserve, the way he seems to see exactly what he expects to see, and never comes away hurt or betrayed or disappointed by her. That damning, impossible trust.

He knows the truth of her and the truth of her nature, and still manages to love her anyway. She'd have to be mad not to want him here now, have to be a fool not to know this for what it is.

So _fuck it_. All of it, every last one of her doubts and her reservations and her fears. She can trade them away, can barter them one for one, for his hope and his confidence and his unwavering faith in her, and they'll both be the better for the bargain.

Seconds have passed and she's done nothing but stare at Gordon Tracy. Time seems to have gone quite strange, she's not actually certain how long it's been, how long it takes for his brows to quirk together in some slight indication of puzzlement, concern, and prompt, "Penny? Not even a hello?"

She's already wasted too much time for anything as banal as _hello_.

So she steps across the boundary of his personal space, and one of her arms curls around his hip, the other reaches up to his shoulder. She's in her stockinged feet, so she has to stretch up onto her tiptoes to press a kiss against his lips, before he can say a further word.

His arms tighten around her, his hands fall into place at the small of her back, the nape of her neck—she feels the roughness of fresh bandages on his left, wonders at how it must hurt him when his fingers press against her skin. She tastes honey for no other reason than it's what she associates with him, and smells the scents of citrus and sandalwood, senses the way he's so much stronger than she is, and the insistent, earnest way he holds her, even as she kisses him again. She closes her eyes and tears press against her eyelashes, though she doesn't know why.

Because it's perfect. She's been waiting for this, though she hadn't realized. It's right and it's good and there's a paradoxical sense of finality to it, at the same time as she seems to feel the sensation of something beginning; something warm and true and real; something growing bright from the very heart of her. Something she's wanted, and hasn't dared to admit.

"I love you," she says, with the first breath she takes as she breaks away, falls back from the tips of her toes and looks up, with her eyes bright with tears and her voice catching just a little. "Gordon? I do. I didn't mean to take so long to say so. I love you, and I'm so glad you're here."

And if happiness is radiant on Scott, it's _incandescent_ on Gordon. And he smiles, and then he laughs, and then he kisses her again, quick and joyful and impulsive. And there's still laughter in his voice as he shakes his head and says, "Damn it, Pen. That's what I was gonna say."


	20. depression

There are always a few moments, waking, when he doesn't quite remember that the first voice he hears won't be hers. There are always a few moments when he still just _expects_ to hear her, a soft little "good morning" right in his ear.

Then reality reasserts itself, and the truth settles back in place.

It's too much. Even with a week to try to grow used to the weight of it, sometimes the truth is still so crushing and unbearable that it levels him completely, leaves him helpless. Sometimes, waking, the first and only thing he can do is just cry until he can't breathe, just the same as he had in that first moment without her, when he'd first understood that she was really gone.

Someone always comes, then. He doesn't always know who, or how they know to come find him, but someone always does. Alan or Virgil, most often—but it might be he only thinks that because they'd been with him for entire days at a time, in the hospital. Sometimes Gordon or Grandma. Brains, at least once.

Sometimes it's the middle of the night, and he'll realize suddenly that someone else is there. He has a very clear memory of his grandmother, sitting in bed beside him in the dark, stroking his hair and shushing him gently. The coarseness softened out of her eighty-five-year old voice as he'd curled up like a child, with his head in her lap and one of her hands clasping one of his. She'd said kind, comforting things, called him _sweetheart_ and _baby_ , and made him feel very, very young. And, somehow, just the tiniest bit better. Better to the point that he'd managed to get his breath back and start to calm down, and to ease slowly back to sleep, rather than just crying himself into exhaustion.

Sometimes, waking, it's just that it's all too much.

But then, sometimes—sometimes he's just awake. Sometimes he waits for that initial shock of pain, but it doesn't come. Sometimes those first few empty moments stretch out into long, lenient minutes, and as they pass, he becomes acutely aware of the space around him.

Alone in his bedroom, he'll feel the weave of his sheets against his skin, the weight of the blankets. He'll feel the air in the room, subtle currents from an overhead fan, cool enough to chill his skin if he thinks about them too long. When his eyes open, each time he blinks, he'll hear his eyelashes brush against the pillow he's pressed his face into. He'll manage to dodge the bullet of concentrating too hard on his breathing, and instead just allow it to happen. He'll ignore the clock by the bedside, and instead try to gauge the time from the colour and quality of the light in the room.

Frequently there's a glass on the bedside table, half full of water, though he never remembers drinking from it. He'll watch it for a long time, though it's just still, just an object, and does nothing but catch and confuse the light in the room, refracting the lines that edge around the shades drawn across his bedroom windows. When his attention inevitably drifts from the glass by the bedside, he'll find something else. Some other something to focus on. He won't do anything for as long as he can. He'll just lie awake and still and silent, and try to find enough small details to fill up his every thought, to stave off thinking of the loss of her.

But inevitably something will get through. He'll feel the itch of the bandages still covering the incision where his pacemaker was removed, or catching sight of the green light of the digital clock beside his bed will remind him of the colour she'd always used to indicate happiness. Or he'll think of something he should have told her, something he _meant_ to tell her. Or something he wanted to know, some answer she would have had. Or he'll wonder if she knew—really knew—what it would do to him to lose her, and why she would have left him anyway.

There's nothing for it, then. At that point he has no choice but to get up or break down. To find a way to move, find something to do, something else to think of. If he's awake early enough that it's before Virgil comes to wake him, he'll retreat into the bathroom, and turn the shower on, as hot as he can stand, and break down anyway. He'll sit in the middle of the tile floor, letting the water beat against his skin and pretending that the pain of heat and pressure is the reason he's crying again. At least in the shower he feels less spent and wrung out and dehydrated after the spell passes. At least it's less of a mess.

But eventually that becomes unsustainable, too. Eventually the feeling of water on his skin starts to seem like torture. Eventually the white noise starts to sound like whispered words. Or, worse, eventually the water runs for long enough that it starts to run cold. This is nearly impossible in the villa, and means that he's been sitting around in a disassociative state for at least an hour, possibly longer. This, in turn, makes him feel like his sanity is slipping, the way he can just blank entire hours of time out of his memory; thinking and feeling and doing nothing, until freezing, painful cold is the only thing that snaps him out of it.

This happens on Sunday morning. A week since he'd woken in the hospital in Zurich. A week since his life ended. A week without her.

But he's lost his sense of time and place, and doesn't know to mark the day, so instead he's sitting on the tile floor of his shower, and his teeth are starting to chatter.

 _Turn the water off, John. You_ _'re going to make yourself sick. Come on. Get up. Dry off._

He stumbles out of the bathroom, shivering and only halfway dried off and with a towel wrapped around his waist. The clothes he'd slept in are still discarded on the bathroom floor, dripped all over with cold water from when he'd gotten out of the shower.

 _You don_ _'t want them, anyway. You've worn them for the past three days. You can do better. Try._

He finds himself sitting back down at the edge of the bed, tempted to crawl back beneath the blankets and just stay there until someone (Virgil, probably, all brusque and insistent) comes along to try to feed and/or medicate him. Lately his existence is blocked out neatly in eight hour spans, marked by doses of antibiotics administered slowly over the course of an hour or so. 8AM, 4PM, and 12AM are the only times he takes notice of any longer. Usually Virgil wakes him before eight. Today he'd gotten up of his own accord. He hasn't had enough sleep, but he isn't tired.

It's dark. Still early. He can't look at the clock, but the light outside is colourless, nothing like sunrise. He'd guess it's something like five in the morning.

 _Still early. It_ _'s not even dawn. You've got time, John, but don't just sit around like this. Move. Get 'll feel better._

Eventually the cold starts to get to him, the movement of air from the overhead fan. He sits and shivers for a few minutes longer, before something compels him to get up, and cross the room to the walk-in closet. He turns on the light and finds himself curiously calm. The walls are lined in panels of pale blond wood, and the clothes inside are hung neatly, the carpet is thick and cushioned, comfortable. There's a tall, narrow mirror at the far end of the closet, but he pays it no attention, and sits down on the floor.

Everyone's been allowing him to exist exclusively in sweatpants and t-shirts, soft fabrics and shapeless silhouettes. Loose clothing that's easy to pull up in order to change the dressing on his chest, and which doesn't snag or tangle on the picc line they'd installed before he left the hospital, a little plastic catheter threaded into one of his veins and with a port glued in place on his upper arm. When no one's around to tell him not to, sometimes he pulls the waterproof cover off of this, and gets tempted to see what would happen if he pulled it out. It goes all the way to his heart. It would probably bleed and bleed and bleed, and he might just bleed out along with it. Probably not, but maybe. He fingers the plastic port at the end of the catheter.

 _Don_ _'t do that. John? That would be incredibly stupid. Even by your standards. Do not do that._

If he were going to do it, he should've done it in the shower. Less of a mess. But he hadn't, and he's not going to, because this is the sort of disconnected, needlessly self-destructive thought that keeps bubbling up from the deepest, darkest depths of grief. He knows that. Mostly. He mostly recognizes them as the sort of thoughts that are empty of anything of substance, dissipating at the slightest touch. Occasionally they leave ripples at the surface, and he'll clench his hands until his fingertips bruise his palms, or bite down hard on the inside of his lower lip, but never anything serious. Never anything that would be noticed by anyone else.

All the clothes he owns are years old, serve to remind him how wrong it is that he would be back home, how this place belongs to a version of himself that's three years dead and gone. He spends a long time sitting on the floor of his closet, still in only a towel. Eventually he pulls open one of the built-in drawers and drags the contents out into a heap onto the floor.

He starts rummaging through t-shirts and sweaters and long sleeved pullovers. Here and there something summons up some feeling or memory, and he'll put it aside. A t-shirt of Scott's that he'd wound up with by mistake and just never remembered to return. A button-down shirt in white and gold that had been a Christmas present from someone, worn once or twice in an effort to be polite, and then wedged in the back of a drawer. An old MIT hoodie that he looks at for a long time, before finding a hundred dollar bill in one of the pockets and getting disproportionately confused by its existence.

 _You don_ _'t need that. Why would you have had it to begin with? No one carries cash these days. Not even when you were in college. It wasn't really_ that _long ago._

He doesn't know what to do but just put it back, in the other pocket this time. He puts the sweatshirt aside, but remembers where. He's cold, but not cold enough for that.

 _Find something to wear, John. You_ _'re being ridiculous._

There's no discernible system to where he places things, he just rifles through drawers and pulls things off hangers, and eventually ends up in boxers, a pair of jeans he's probably owned since college, worn soft and supple, and a yielding piece of cotton jersey that turns out to be a long-sleeved raglan shirt, white on his chest and blue on his sleeves. He leaves half his wardrobe crumpled in piles on the closet floor as he loses even the approximation of interest.

 _That_ _'s only going to be a problem for you later. But leave it for now._

The light in his room is different by the time he closes the closet door behind him. He's not sure how much time has passed. But he's gotten dressed, and that's something. Yesterday he'd gotten dressed, and things had happened. Nothing that concerned him particularly, or really had much to do with him at all, but he's been having a hard time with causality lately. Yesterday he'd worn jeans and a rust-coloured pullover in the afternoon, and Gordon had punched Virgil in the face.

That had made a change.

He pushes open his bedroom door, still in his bare feet, and wonders what else will change today.

He wanders out of his room and into an empty hallway. No one else will be up this early, not with Gordon gone. If Gordon were still here, from the upper floor of the villa, he might see his brother down in the pool, swimming his usual five thousand meters. Only, no. No, that's a detail he remembers from before, from back when his family's chaotically ordered life was something he watched at distance, made sense of at a glance. Scott's with their father. Gordon's gone to London. Virgil and Alan and Grandma are still in bed. He's alone.

Outside, through a wall of tinted glass, the sky is still the deep, twilit blue of pre-dawn, above a band of gold at the horizon. The waning crescent of the moon hangs in the slowly lightening sky. He feels the need to take the door out to the terrace that juts out over the villa below, and see the sky in its own true colours.

He brings himself to the edge of the terrace and sits. The poured concrete is smooth and cool, and there's a breeze off the sea to steal some of the tropical heat from the air. There's no railing, and he shifts so that his legs hang over the edge. He's the equivalent of four floors up, maybe five. Below, the open air falls away to scrubby greenery, clinging to the island's craggy terrain. He makes himself feel a little bit dizzy and breathless, and aware of those awful, abyssal thoughts of the harm he could cause, if he chose. No one's up at this hour. It would be ages before they even knew. He's not going to do anything, and he knows that, but there's nothing and no one to stop him from sitting at the edge, just thinking about it. It's like undertaking a dare with himself; presenting the means and the opportunity so clearly.

He wonders if his family can tell how badly he'd wished to die.

It seems like the world's most obvious secret. It seems like he must've said it out loud by now, the awful truth that keeps trying to tear its way out of him. In the midst of one of the endless jags of crying, it seems like he wouldn't have been able to help it from spilling out, but he can't ever remember what he says, if he even manages to say anything at all. It's not like anyone would understand.

He still thinks it wouldn't have been so bad. If he could have followed her, if he could've just slipped the line and let go, it would have been better than this; better than having to find his way forward, more alone than ever.

But instead, Alan. And her shuttle and his father. And the hospital. And his family. And home. And somehow the sun still rises every morning. It's paradoxical. He's being treated for the illness that's been killing him, and yet as his health improves and his overall awareness along with it; he feels worse and worse. He's beginning to be able to think again, but all he has to think about is how hard it is to go on, how little he deserves to have survived this ordeal, when he's failed so completely.

He knows his life is over. Everything he believed in, everything that he'd thought was true and good and right and important doesn't matter any longer, because he loved her, and she's gone. None of the principles that held up her right to existence seem to matter if she no longer exists.

And somehow he's still here, and still expected to carry on. Somehow the world goes on without her in it, even if he can't understand how or why. Wishing to die seems so small and pathetic against the force of everything that brings the sun over the horizon every morning. Out over the pool and down beyond the island's eastern face, the sea stretches out, rose gold in the light of dawn. Even sat at the edge of a precipice as he is, even with his heart broken and his soul torn out of him, even if he's just a shell of who he was the last time he saw the sunrise, for some reason all he wants is to watch the light of day creep gradually into the eastern sky.

It's been so long since he watched the sunrise, a _real_ sunrise. It's not as though a sunrise seen from orbit is any less real, so much as just sixteen times more frequent. In orbit he falls across the turn of the Earth beneath him, races towards the light of the sun. Dawn on Earth happens so slowly. Astronomical, nautical, civil dawn. Sunrise. Formally, at this time of year, sunrise isn't until about a quarter after seven. He probably still has an hour or so to wait.

An hour alone with the dawn, and the thoughts he's been so deliberately avoiding. He shivers in a non-existent chill and his hands twist together in his lap. He swallows and breathes and closes his eyes, tries to find something like stillness in the torrent of pain inside him. Carefully, tentatively, aware of how easily he breaks these days, he starts to let his mind wander.

There's really only one place for it to go.


	21. acceptance

The letter is printed on real, actual paper. Usually it sits in his desk drawer, still in its torn open envelope, a secret he secretly sort of wants someone to catch him with. More than once he's left the top drawer open, just halfway, in case Grandma or Scott happen to be in his room for whatever reason, and just happen to feel inclined to grossly invade his privacy. So far both Scott and Grandma have disappointed him. As far as he knows, the letter's still his secret and his secret only.

Secret or not, occasionally he takes it out and rereads it, and though he always remembers the gist of the contents, it's always surprising to him just how flattering it actually is. Words like "it is our sincere pleasure" and "bright and widely gifted" and "standout candidate from our thousands of applicants". A lot of grand talk about kindred spirits and a history of excellence. The sort of promising language that had almost— _almost_ —might've made him excited about what the future might hold.

He'd spent a lot of time trying to work out just how he wanted to tell John. Obviously it would have to be John he told first. He'd thought about sneaking the letter in with one of John's monthly supply shipments, letting him find it for himself—but he also wanted to be there in person, wanted to see the look on his brother's face. So that was no good.

He'd tried to come up with some plausible, non-crisis based excuse to get back into orbit, back out to TB5 before his next scheduled cargo drop off. But it costs about a quarter of a million dollars to launch TB3, and so just popping into orbit on a whim hasn't ever really been an option, for Alan, and his excuses for getting into space generally need to be _really good excuses_. Lives need to be on the line, for Alan to get into orbit. And waiting for his next scheduled supply run would've meant waiting 'til October—too late.

Ultimately, as he'd started to let the idea fade out of possibility, he'd even entertained some wildly improbable schemes designed to get John to come down, off of TB5, and back home, so that Alan could tell him. So that it could be a surprise that he dropped into the middle of a welcome home party for his brother, and a reason for John to stay on Earth for a while. Besides John, he still needed to drop the news on the rest of the family, and figure out how completely his life was going to change as a result, and whether or not he really wanted it to.

It just had to be John who heard first.

But then, EOS. And malaria. And with everything that had followed, even if it _had_ gotten him back on the ground, the complete and total collapse of John's life as he'd known it has been a fairly compelling reason not to bring it up. The sum total of everything that's happened to John makes Alan's letter seem like such a small, pathetic thing. Like bringing it up _now_ would be a feeble, futile gesture, something pitiful and naive. As though John could possibly find a way to be happy for or proud of his little brother, in the face of everything he's lost. It's stupid. It would be stupid to even mention it.

It's probably too late, now, anyway. It's the twenty-second of August. Classes start on the seventh of September. He needs to be registered before that, needs to have tuition and everything all sorted out and in order. Sure, they've got the sort of money that just makes this kind of thing just _happen_ , whatever the obstacles. His family's name is the kind of name that scissors effortlessly through red tape, cuts through bureaucracy like butter. But still. It's not much more than two weeks. And anyway, it's the worst possible time for something like this. Alan shouldn't even be considering it, really. He doesn't think he even really _wants_ to go.

So Alan's not sure what he's doing, lying awake at six AM, reading and rereading the stupid letter. He's not sure why he folds it up and slips it back in its envelope. He's not sure what compels him to get up, out of bed, and creep to his bedroom door, and then out into the hallway. No one else is going to be up. John's _definitely_ not going to be up. There aren't a lot of reasons for his brother to want to inhabit the waking world at present, the side of reality where he's sick and bereaved, and still fresh in the failure of a task he'd thought was most important thing in the world.

And in light of those circumstances, he's not sure why he wants to just slip the envelope beneath John's door, and if John's got the capacity to care one way or the other about the fact that Alan's been accepted to MIT, then that can be John's choice.

Except when he comes to the door of John's room, he finds it's been left hanging halfway open.

In and of itself, this isn't enough to make him panic. But he does feel his throat constrict just slightly, as he pushes open the bedroom door and finds the bed empty, and the light in the bathroom off. The notion of John not being where he's supposed to be is a fairly new addition to Alan's list of major fears. Considering John had spent nearly three years occupying exactly the one place he was always supposed to, it's probably not surprising that recent events have given Alan a fairly acute phobia of being unable to find his brother.

Alan turns the light on and checks the bathroom anyway, finds it cold and empty and with the shower still freshly wet, a heap of clothing on the floor. Just a little bit frantic, exiting the bathroom, he pushes the disarrayed sheets and blankets off the bed, but it's obviously empty. The light in the closet is on, shining beneath the closed door, but he's not there, either. There's just a discarded towel, still damp, and clothing all over the floor. John's not here, but Alan calls his name anyway, just once, and his voice comes out small and flat and falls through the silence like a smooth stone through still water.

Alan's starting to get scared.

It's not like he could've gone anywhere. It's not like he would've left, either, not like he has anywhere to go. And he wouldn't, he just wouldn't. After everything, John _has_ to know he has to _stop_. Alan hasn't even started to look for him properly yet, all that's happened so far is just that John hadn't been where he was expected. That's all it is. John's probably just down in the kitchen or he's gone to the lounge or he's just somewhere Alan hasn't looked yet, because Alan hasn't even looked anywhere. The fear starting to churn in the pit of his stomach is just nerves, it's just the fact that it's too early and he hasn't had enough sleep.

But better safe than sorry.

So he leaves John's room to go and wake Virgil, going straight to high alert. It's only luck that he happens to glance out the window, only anxiety that has him cast his eyes down to the sea, out over the terrace. And for all that he's not expecting to see him, it's somehow not really surprising that he spots his brother, sitting alone at the edge of the terrace, with very, very little between him and about a fifty foot fall.

Alan doesn't entirely know how to contend with the feeling that washes over him, then. The distant silhouette of his big brother, his best and favourite brother, outlined against the slowly lightening sky. John's home. John's _finally_ home, after all these years and all this anguish, he's finally back, finally been run to ground. He's home and he's whole and he's safe and he's healing, and yet after all of it, after everything he's put himself through—to say nothing of his family and his friends and all the people who love him—he's still found himself another edge. Still put himself at the brink of it.

But it's not what it looks like. Somehow Alan knows that, even as he lets out a shaky deep breath and makes for the glass door out onto the terrace—this is nothing like the worst thing Alan could've caught his brother at. Because if the worst had been the case, he's pretty sure he wouldn't have caught John at all. John would just be gone.

But _that_ isn't what this is. Even after everything he's been through, at the very lowest point in his life thus far, Alan knows John better than that. He's seen what it "killing himself" looks like on John, and it doesn't look like this.

Still, he can't quite help the first thing he says as he shoves open the terrace door and pads across the concrete in his bare feet. With the early morning breeze catching his voice, a little sharper, sterner than he means it to be, Alan snaps an order, "John, come away from there."

John hasn't heard him approach. Alan can tell by the way he starts and immediately turns away from the horizon, already pulling one of his legs up and back onto the solidity of the terrace. Maybe it's the light of morning, or something in the way he holds himself, or just the way he looks up like he's been caught at something—but for the first time since he's been home, at least to Alan, John looks alarmingly, arrestingly young.

And Alan's still not used to feeling like an adult in John's company. John, more than anyone else, has always made Alan feel as though he's still a bit of a child. Standing about ten feet back from his brother, still in his pajamas, with rocketships printed on his flannel pants and an old t-shirt of Gordon's with some inane nonsense all but faded from the front—suddenly all Alan wants is to be a little brother again.

So he doesn't wait for John to start the conversation, because John just _doesn_ _'t_ , these days. Instead Alan crosses the few feet of distance between them, sits down next to his brother, and shoves the letter against his elbow, looking away as he does so. It takes a moment for John to realize he's expected to take it, and when he does, Alan doesn't say anything. Alan doesn't watch. He just listens as John pulls the letter out of its envelope, starts to read.

He's not sure if the rustle of paper he hears is the faint breeze, or a tremor in his brother's hand. He's not sure how quickly John reads, or how well he comprehends anything these days. It seems like a long, long time before John speaks, and his voice is soft, a little husky as he says, stating the obvious, "You got into MIT."

Alan nods, though John's not looking at him. "Yeah."

"When did you get this?"

The date's printed at the top, but Alan doesn't point that out, doesn't remember it offhand, anyway. "A while back. I dunno." He steals a glimpse of the page, and it's definitely a tremor in his brother's hand that makes it difficult to read the date John's missed. "April, I guess."

" _April_." The incredulity in his tone is a surprise, and Alan glances up, but John's still staring at the letter. This time Alan watches as his pale blue eyes skim over the text again, rapid. Faster than he'd expected, but then, he supposes John's always been a fast reader. "It's...I-I thought...thought this was—" Abruptly John pauses, swallows, and his voice has steadied slightly when he continues, "—mine. I thought it was mine. I had to check the name at the top. It reads exactly the same as the one I got. Ages ago. But...April? _This_ April. April was..." he trails off, failing to find the word that Alan supplies for him—

"Before."

It's as good a word as any to represent the other side of the rent in John's life, the line that divides his _now_ from _her_ , then. It fails to encompass the magnitude of the _after_ , but for now, _before_ serves its purpose.

"...Yeah." John nods once, a quick, tight little gesture. He folds the letter back up, and his fingertips crease it sharply in thirds. He doesn't hand it back, continues to run his fingers around the edge of the folds, sharpening them further. It's a repetitive, anxious motion, from long, nervous fingers. He'll give himself a papercut if he's not careful, though it would probably hardly even be noticeable, amidst the scars that already crisscross the pads of his fingers. He seems distant, disconnected and almost confused, as he goes on, "But if...I-I mean—April? If it was all the way back in April, why didn't you say?"

Alan shrugs. Kicks his feet, hanging off the edge of the terrace, and admits the truth, though he worries it's only going to make his brother feel bad, "Wanted to tell you in person. But I couldn't figure out when I was gonna get to see you next. And then when I did—" It had been May. Alan shrugs again, pretends indifference to the memory of his brother, nearly suffocating in open space, the occasion that had brought Alan back into orbit, back to TB5. "Bad timing."

"...Oh."

Silence falls between them. John's still looking at the letter in his hands, but he's stopped turning it over and over, opened it back up again. The sky grows pale and the horizon glows a soft, ruddy gold. Soon the sun will rise and add another day to his big brother's one-day-at-a-time kind of a life. For a long few moments Alan stares down over the craggy cliffs and scrubby plant life and idly finds himself thinking about just how inhospitable the island is. It's rugged and beautiful, in its way, at the same time that it's raw and lonely and barren, a fortress in the middle of the sea.

But it's still home.

Although, proportionate to the amount of life they've all lived, the island's been home to Alan for longer than its been home to his brothers; ten years, over half his life. John, by contrast, had been seventeen when he started college, had gone straight from their home in Kansas to an off-campus apartment in Boston, where he'd lived alone until he was twenty-one. Then it had been to Houston, to train with the WWSA, and then into Low Earth Orbit, and Camp Hadfield. And after _that_ , it had been up to TB5 itself, where his rotations used to be only three months long, and then a month off, at home on the island. And then Dad had vanished. And then John had left. And doing the math in his head, Alan's starting to realize that maybe Tracy Island has just _never_ been home to John, the way it is for the rest of the family. Proportionate to the ten years for which Tracy Island has been home to the Tracy family, John's spent very, very few of them actually at home. All told, John probably spent more years in Boston than he has on the island.

So it's possible that he won't actually understand the reasons _why_ , when Alan takes a deep breath, steels himself, and says, "I'm not gonna go."

He makes the decision in the same moment he says it; that he's not going. The timing's all wrong. Maybe spring. Maybe next autumn. But not now, there's no way he could do it now. Not with his big brother in the state he is, not like _this_. He should've let it stay a secret. He should've gotten rid of the letter entirely, pretended to himself that he'd never gotten it. He's not even sure why he's told John at all, it's not like John could possibly bring himself to actually _care_.

And all of this wants to come spilling out of him, but he doesn't say anything.

For a long time, John doesn't either. But then—

"Why not?"

 _Because I still don_ _'t think I actually even know if I really even want to. Because I only even applied at all because I wanted to make you proud. Because I don't know why I should, I'm already doing what I want. Because even when I try to be, I'm_ not _like you, I_ _'m scared of being all on my own. Because I don't wanna leave home and be gone for four whole years. Because you need me here. Because I'm not leaving you like this. Because I bailed on you once before, and everything fell apart._

"Lotsa reasons."

"You don't want to?"

Alan shrugs, shifts where he sits and lets his feet dangle, kicks them lightly in the open air. "I dunno."

"Is there somewhere else you were more interested in, or—"

"I only applied to MIT." It goes unsaid that if Alan's even interested in college at all, then he's only interested in the same one John had attended. "I just wanted to...I dunno, just wanted to see, I guess. It's all online. It was easy."

There's a funny sort of pause and then John's a little hesitant when he asks, "You had to know they'd take you?"

Alan's not sure why John's made that question sound rhetorical, as though it's an obviously foregone conclusion. It hadn't been, in Alan's mind. But the line of inquiry seems to be bringing out something like curiosity in his brother, like John's actually engaged. Maybe John might be grateful for a distraction. He looks up to find he's being regarded with something that might even be interest. He shrugs again and drops his gaze, embarrassed. "Maybe. I guess. I get good grades. I guess my SAT was pretty okay."

 _That_ sparks something, there's the faintest note of warmth in John's tone when he says, "Allie, you scored a _1580_. That's fifty points better than I did."

Alan hadn't known that. He's heard John say it before—that there's empirical proof that Alan's the smarter out of the pair of them—but he'd always brushed it off as his big brother attempting to appeal to his ego whenever he felt like whining about school. "I only took it to make Virgil shut up about it. The adviser I emailed said the test scores aren't really _that_ important."

"They're _kind of_ important when they're only twenty points shy of perfect. That's not nothing, Alan."

There's an intensity to John now, and this is is starting to get a little surreal. This is the first time Alan's actually sat down and really _talked_ to John, since he's been home, and they're talking about the same sort of thing they'd always talked about, _before_. If it weren't for the shadows beneath his eyes, the gauntness of his face, the fact that he's actually _here_ and not a translucent blue hologram—things could almost be normal. They're not, but for a moment, Alan almost imagines that they could be. "Yeah, well. I'm _your_ kid brother. I'm sure that went a long way."

"I'm almost positive it didn't."

"That'd be two whole Thunderbirds for their roster. That's probably all it was."

"That's not how colleges work."

"That's not what Gordon said. _Suck it_ , Caltech."

John's laugh surprises both of them, a brief ghost of a sound, the sort of laugh that you'd barely know is a laugh at all, unless you're the sort of person who knows John well. Impulsively, sitting as close to each other as they are, Alan knocks his knee against his brother's, a brief, affectionate gesture, the both of them sitting together at the edge. The moment doesn't last, but it definitely existed. Alan didn't imagine _that_.

It makes the way John gets quiet again that much more poignant, only serves to make him sound so much more disappointed, when he says, "But you're not going."

Alan doesn't expect to feel as uncomfortable, as guilty as he does, as he hedges, "Well, I mean..."

Until recently, Alan's had good reason to believe that he knows John better than anyone else does; better than the rest of his brothers, for sure. The flip side of that coin is that John knows _him_ equally well, if not better. Alan might be smarter on paper, but John's always had a certain way with people. His voice when he speaks next is soft, but certain, "I would really hate to be why you don't do this, Alan. Please, don't use me as an excuse."

Alan deflates at that, feels his shoulders drop and heaves a sigh. "It's not an excuse. It's a reason—a _good_ reason. Dad's not here. Scott's not here. Virgil's been acting like an _ass_. And Gordon just _left_ —"

John starts to cut him off, "—I don't mind about—"

"I _do_ ," Alan interrupts. "You're _home_. You're finally home—I've been waiting _forever_ for you to just _be home_. And maybe you don't want anyone else to be here, and maybe the rest of them can just tell, and that's...I mean, that's whatever. We're your family, but _whatever_. I know everything's all fucked up, but you...you...I...just, _god_ , John. When I found you, you were _dying_. I really didn't believe you were even gonna make it home. But now you're here, and you need help. So I'm not going anywhere."

The pause that follows is long enough that it's almost awkward, makes Alan feel like he's just said something stupid, the sort of naive, worthless platitude that won't make any difference, will only make things worse, somehow.

"No." There's not a lot of force in it, just a single syllable, simply stated. There's not even that much pain in John's voice, just an awful, hollow sort of honesty. "Alan, you can't help with this."

Silence falls again. That probably shouldn't hurt as much as it does. Maybe it only hurts because deep down Alan knows it's true—that there's nothing Alan can offer that's going to make this any easier. The only thing he'd been able to think of was his acceptance letter, meant to be tiny little bright spot; something to take John's mind off everything he's lost. Something to remind him of happier days.

And the idea hits him like a lightning strike.

It's such a sudden, abrupt sort of thought that he just blurts it out without even properly thinking about it— "Come with me."

It's nearly sunrise. That's the reason John's out here, to watch the sun come up. And he misunderstands, because Alan's straightened up and sat back from the edge of the terrace, like he means to get up and go. John shakes his head and keeps looking out towards the horizon. "Soon. I just...sorry, Alan, I didn't mean...I'm sorry. Just give me a few more minutes and I'll come inside, I just wanted—"

"No, I mean, I'll go if you _come with me_. To Boston, to MIT." In spite of himself, in spite of the circumstances, Alan's starting to get excited. "You can help _me_."

"Alan—"

John sounds so tired, suddenly, as though the very thought exhausts him. But Alan's seen a glimmer of hope at the core of the idea, and he presses on, anxiety mingling with excitement as he trips and stammers through the list of reasons why this could work, "It's...it's not just because of you that I don't wanna go; it's all of it. When you were it college, you always made it seem like it would be _easy_ , and maybe for you it _was_ —but it's hard, for me. It's leaving home and being away from everyone and everything—a-and I don't...I don't even know how any of this _works_. College. I...I don't wanna be the only one of us who _doesn_ _'t_ go, but...I mean, I'm already doing what I want to be doing. Why would I even want to do anything else?"

"Alan, this is the _only_ thing you've ever done. _That_ _'s_ why you should go."

It's just the tiniest, barest indication of John's old self, a flicker of light in a deep dark well, manifested in the tendency to point out the obvious truths in Alan's life. "That's why it's hard, too, though."

There's an obvious truth here, waiting to be pointed out. John probably isn't quite together enough to realize that it's a baited trap, when he points out, "MIT isn't anywhere _near_ the same league as some of the hardest things you've done, Allie."

And Alan probably shouldn't feel the little thrill of satisfaction that he does, managing to outmaneuver his older brother—John's hardly at his best, after all—but it's hard not to be a little bit proud of himself, when he says, "But I always had _you_ , when I did those things."

John doesn't seem to have an answer for that, so Alan goes on, carefully now, having to find the words to speak around a truth that hurts so much, "Maybe I'm just being selfish, asking you to come with me—but if you really want me to go, I _can_ _'t_ go without you. I've gotta be wherever you are. I know I'm not who you want, right now. I know you loved her and I know she loved you, and I wish she wasn't gone. But...John, you're my brother and I love you, too. I _know_ I can't help you with this, but—I _do_ know the last thing she told me was not to let you be alone. That's the last thing she wanted, so for now it's all I want. Maybe it'll help. Probably it won't. But it's just what I've gotta do."

The sun's almost risen. John hasn't taken his eyes from the horizon, and he still holds Alan's letter in his hands, though the tremor in them seems to have stopped. It's not to say that Alan's gotten desensitized to the sight of his brother with tears in his eyes, tracks of dawn light glistening on his cheeks—but it's no longer the internally world-ending event that it had been the first time. It's just John, and this is just what life is for John, right now.

What does surprise him is the way his big brother's arm falls around his shoulders, the way he gets pulled close, in a way he hasn't in years. It's just automatic to wrap his arms around John's torso, then, and to press his face against John's shoulder. It's not a "yes". It's not even a "maybe". But when his brother says a quiet *thank you*, in the same moment that the sun breaks over the horizon—for Alan, it's enough.


	22. trinity

Two weeks isn't a great deal of time to find and secure appropriate housing, at the onset of the fall semester, in a town that's crowded with new students waiting to begin their college careers.

Admittedly it's easier when one has the resources to drop nearly a million dollars on a brownstone condominium, already outfitted and furnished, and right across the river from MIT. This place is only about a twenty minute walk from campus, practically a straight shot over the bridge across the river. It's as close to perfect as it could possibly be. There'd been no question that Jeff Tracy would make it happen, if it was what his boys really wanted.

And he thinks it is. Something about this whole arrangement seems right. Even if he's uncharacteristically nervous, standing alone in the building's lobby with the keys in hand, waiting for Scott to arrive with John and Alan, Jeff's still reasonably sure that this isn't a mistake. Kyrano's dutifully vetted all of the neighbours, made sure that no one nearby could present any kind of threat. He's gone with Scott to pick John and Alan up at the airport, left his daughter behind to make a final, prudent sweep of the building, just to be safe. Kayo had been the one to outfit the apartment itself with a custom security system, including direct, encrypted lines back to Tracy Island. The place is as secure as she can make it, without bulletproofing the windows and adding a panic room.

Jeff had been the one to talk Kayo out of bulletproofing the windows and adding a panic room. Despite the degree to which Kayo's grown protective of her brothers, especially in Jeff's absence, there's such a thing as inviting trouble. It's why he'd refrained from buying the entire building outright. It would've been excessive.

So the building itself is a beautiful old brownstone, nearly two hundred years old, and in an exercise in restraint, Jeff Tracy only owns the sixth floor of it. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, living room. The place is relatively modest. Quiet, safe, in a good neighbourhood. Of a better caliber than some of the places Jeff's hidden out, in the three years that he's been gone. It'll be home to Alan for the next four years of his college career, or for as long as it suits him.

Probably it won't ever be home to John, however long he decides to stay here. Jeff has a better idea than most of just how hard it's going to be, for his son to feel like he belongs anywhere, these days. When the idea of home is a person rather than a place, being left behind makes it far, far easier to come adrift in the world.

And it seems to be something they have in common, he and John, the fact that it's proving very hard to come home again.

But for Jeff's part, at least, it's about to get marginally easier.

Because the fact that John's left Tracy Island gives his father tacit permission to finally return home himself. It's not clear whether John knows this or not, whether his decision to help get Alan started at MIT—or for that matter, Alan's decision to go to MIT at all—was made with an awareness of the reasons Jeff hadn't returned home yet.

The notion that his son might sacrifice anything _further_ on his behalf—it's more than Jeff thinks he could stand.

Maybe that's why he's nervously pacing the parquet floor of the small lobby. Late afternoon sunlight slants through the building's glass front doors. The street outside is quiet, local traffic is minimal. Just inside the door there's a neat row of mailboxes, and the one on the end awaits a new nameplate. Behind him, further inward, six flights of stairs rise up and around, short corridors leading to private entraces to each apartment. There's a bench against the wall beneath a rather insipid attempt at abstract art, the sort of placeholder piece of decoration that he's always found personally offensive.

Still, at least it's something to look at, and he drifts over to the wall it hangs upon, tries to glean some deeper meaning from the splatters of bright colour, at odds with the impressionistic forms of dark blue and black across of the rest of the canvas. The whole thing's oddly composed and has a feeling of haphazardness about it, but it distracts him to the point that he doesn't hear it when the building's front door opens behind him. He doesn't hear footsetps crossing the hardwood floor, doesn't hear the it when his son first clears his throat. Jeff Tracy is sixty years old and though he wears his age fairly well, his hearing still isn't what it used to be. So he doesn't realize that John's there, until he hears him say, just softly— "Dad?"

He doesn't startle, exactly, but Jeff does feel himself freeze up. This isn't the way he'd been expecting this encounter to play out. He'd been expecting Scott, escorting his brothers and running interference, helping to defuse some of the tension that feels like it must be inherent to this interaction. He'd been expecting Alan, all anxiety and excitement about the start of his college career, to draw focus and hold everyone's attention. He'd been expecting John to want nothing to do with him.

Jeff hasn't spoken to John since Zurich and even then, it had just been an unheard goodbye at his son's bedside, a gentle squeeze of his hand, before John had even been conscious. And then Jeff had just _left_ , covering guilt and shame and remorse with action, as though if he does enough on John's behalf, it might make up for even a fraction of what John's lost in his father's name.

It won't, of course. Privately, Jeff knows that nothing ever will.

Turning, even just the sight of his son is enough to stab that same guilt right through the heart of him. It's impossible not to give John a quick once-over, considering the state he'd been in when Jeff had seen him last. It goes without saying that he looks better, though in some ways that's almost worse. John's neatly, impeccably dressed as always, but there's something like fatigue in the way he carries himself. He wears a simple woolen peacoat against the early autumn chill, not his usual grey, but a deep, mournful black. Sharply tailored lines can't cover the way his shoulders slump, the way the sleek messenger bag he wears across his chest seems to weigh him down. Some of the gauntness has softened from his features and he's no longer ashen pale, but the fact that he's gotten some colour back can't disguise the bruise-dark circles beneath his eyes, or their watery, melancholy blue. He looks tired. And there's an unmistakable sadness to him.

"John," his father says, and hates the way it sounds perfunctory, distant. Practiced neutrality drowns out everything he feels at the sight of his son. He hates the ease and the falseness of the pleasantry that follows, natural and automatic, "You're looking well. It's good to see you."

 _Well_ is the wrong word. _Better_ is more technically accurate. As to whether it's good to see him—it's hard to feel as though he deserves to. Hard to know whether John will be able to stand his company. At the same time that he's ashamed to look at his son, he also feels starved for the sight of him, and deliberately needs to keep himself from staring. Out in the world, Gordon and Scott have both been better company than their father feels he deserves. On the homefront, Virgil and Alan have put up a wall of frigid politesse, presumably on their brother's behalf, delivered updates about his health dutifully, but without a great deal of warmth. That's fine. Jeff's not sure if it's cowardice or guilt that's had him keep his distance, but that distance has been closed now. And he doesn't know what else to say, beyond pleasantries and platitudes as empty of meaning as the painting on the wall behind him.

"I suppose I'm as well as I can be." There's a distinct sense of recitation about the way John answers, neutral and unemotional, as though he's already had this answer planned out, practiced. He goes on, explaining why he's here alone, "Scott and Alan wanted to take a look around campus. I said I was tired. Kyrano dropped me off. They'll be here soon."

"Oh. Well, you—I mean, that's understandable. That you'd be tired. You were very sick." The banality of it all is still infuriating, the way he's fallen immediately into the trap of mindless smalltalk. But this wasn't ever the place or the time he'd imagined, when he'd thought of seeing John again. He's been caught off guard, and everything he'd thought he might say to his son feels like it would be wrong, here and now.

"Yeah."

Jeff retrieves the apartment's keys from his pocket, weighs them suggestively in his hand. "Did you want to go upstairs, have a look at the place, or…?"

"It's Alan's place. He should be first."

"Oh…of course. Yes, of course. We'll wait." It's almost certain that Alan wouldn't mind, but John's immediate dismissal of the idea permits for nothing else. Instead, Jeff steps aside from the bench against the wall and nods at it, means to be considerate, sympathetic to the fact that John's just said he's tired. "If you wanted to sit—"

"No, I'm fine."

Of course not. As though John could possibly want anything his father has to offer. Not that Jeff has a great deal available, standing in the small lobby of a building he doesn't own, with nothing in his pocket but two sets of apartment keys, his wallet and phone—but he feels he should be able to do more. It's so strange to be caught here, in this little pocket of nowhere-in-particular, in the middle of Boston. And in the company of the son he'd nearly lost—nearly _killed_ —with no idea of what to say to him.

John doesn't seem interested in making this any easier, nor should he be.

Awkwardly, fumbling as silence passes without a further word from his son, Jeff looks him up and down again, and seizes on the first thing that comes to mind. "You're still wearing…?" He gestures, his fingertips brushing the bridge of his nose, moving to touch his left ear, even as he continues, "I didn't really think they suited you, but—" He means the piercings, and realizes too late just what he's said, the staggering lack of consideration for what they might mean to his son. He cringes inwardly, braces for the impact this is going to have, and damns himself for a fool.

But John's unfazed, doesn't react except to shift his weight slightly, one of his hands coming up to close around the strap of his bag, crossing his chest above his heart. He looks down for a moment, then glances back up to meet his father's gaze. His voice is steady and even, but there's undeniably a certain sadness in it, when he answers, "You still wear your wedding ring."

That's true.

Unbidden, the fingertips of his right hand go to the ring he still wears on his left. Jeff's never felt the need to take it off, and even with Lucille sixteen years gone, even just the thought of doing so still plays over that old ache of grief. It hasn't diminished. It's changed, certainly, grown familiar. The lack of her hurts no less, only hurts differently. Sixteen years on, and Jeff still finds new ways to miss her, and knows he will for the rest of his life. He misses her now, for all the ways he can see her in their son.

It's a terrible truth to have in common with John, that they've both suffered the loss of a soulmate.

Because there's nothing that can be said about that. Nothing will help. There's nothing he might tell his son that would even begin to reach the depths of the pain he's in now, nothing that would offer any kind of respite. The truth of recovering from a loss like this is that there _is_ no recovery. There's only the long, awful process of trying to find a new way forward, in a world that's been fundamentally, irrevocably altered from what it was meant to be.

Looking at John, he no longer sees Lucille, but himself as he was sixteen years ago, fresh and raw and newly bereaved. The fall of his son's shoulders, the shadows beneath his eyes, the way he stands with his hands drawn close to heart, protective of something that just isn't there any longer. Jeff knows what John's feeling, because he's felt it himself, and feels it still, every day of his life.

It's a terrible thing that they have in common. But maybe it's also the only thing John's father has to offer him; the truth about what he's going through.

And so the truth slips out, unasked for and simply stated, the only thing Jeff can think to say. Somehow his voice remains unbearably light, conversational. He sounds almost casual, as he tells his son something he's never told anyone before—

"When your mother died, I wished more than anything that I could have, too."

He's not looking at John as he says it. Jeff lets his gaze drift to the painting on the wall again, all its meaningless abstraction, because he can't look at his son as he talks about this. He needs to keep the subject almost hypothetical, a fundamental truth about the nature of loss, if he's going to let his son know that he understands. "You've wanted that, haven't you? Not to have to be here, to _do this_ —without her. It's a terrible way to feel. And it's not like you can tell your brothers—all they want is for you to get better. They think you're _going_ to get better. They think the fact that you're still alive is something to be grateful for, while _you_ _'re_ still wishing you could've died in the same moment you realized she'd gone, and not had to keep trying to live through something so awful. It's still awful. It's so much worse than anyone can understand. Of course you'd want to die. I know _I_ wanted to. God, more than anything."

There's no answer from his son, but he doesn't really expect one. John's silence is stillness, like he's frozen, rooted in place. No one will have said anything like this to him, yet. It takes a widower to know a truth like this.

And Jeff goes on, talking about the twofold ideation of his death and his son's, as though it's nothing more consequential than the weather, "It so seemed wrong that I should have to go on without her. More than just unfair, but _wrong_. I thought I wasn't meant to live a life without her in it. I didn't think of what it would do to any of you, to be without _me_. It didn't seem to matter—nothing did, compared to losing Lucy. Sometimes I wonder if that's why I thought I could leave the five of you the way I did, because you'd all already been through it. Losing a parent. And you all did more for each other, when your mother died, than I did for any of you. I had nothing to offer. I was barely there, and I didn't _want_ to be. I wanted to be wherever she was, even if it meant being dead. It took a long, long time to stop wanting that."

There's a glimmer of hope, when John speaks, because his voice has slipped out from its formal, neutral cadence, and it breaks a little with carefully restrained emotion. He sounds young—impossibly young, just the same as he had in Munich, when Jeff had first seen him again—and heartbreakingly vulnerable.

"…but you did?"

"Mostly." Jeff has to look up at that, to offer John a sad smile and to shake his head. "I'd be lying if I said there weren't days when I still do. And I wouldn't be surprised if _you_ wanted it, too. And not just for yourself, but for _me_. If you wish I'd never come back, John—if you'd rather I was dead—I'd understand. There's part of me that wishes that, too, knowing what I've cost you. Your mother would've hated me for it, and that's the worst thing I can say about what I've done. I know I'm why you lost EOS. I know I'm why she's gone. And I know I'll never be able to apologize for that. I can only promise you that I never meant for it to happen, and if I had known how to stop it happening…if I'd known how to stop her, John, I _swear_ —I would have."

It's as close as he's gotten to an apology for something he can never apologize for. And he's ready for his son to hate him; he _deserves_ it, for his son to hate him. It would only be right—would only be _fair_ —for John to hate his father. After everything he's lost, everything he's suffered, and all of it in vain, there's no question that John _should_ hate him.

So Jeff doesn't know quite how to take it, when his son says, softly, "No."

"John—"

But John won't be interrupted. "No, you didn't—you couldn't have. Stopped her, I mean. That wasn't—it wasn't—you. It wasn't your fault. _You_ didn't make her do anything, you couldn't have. _You_ weren't why she did it. Once she knew what had to be…what she…what she had to do—that's when it was over. It was over as soon as you explained the problem. She would've known, then. She was that smart. You wouldn't have stopped her. Not if I couldn't."

The way John's voice runs away from him, it's like something inside him has just come unbound. Possibly it has. But then the way it falters and fails, the way he trails off and falls silent—it's like he knows that by saying it aloud, he makes it real again, has to go through it all over. Jeff could almost swear he sees his son shudder, trying to hold it all back, and watches as his hands twist and tighten where they've clasped the strap of his bag, shutting it back down and closing himself off again.

And maybe he shouldn't press any further, maybe it's selfish to wedge his fingers into the chinks in his son's already flimsy armour and try to get at the bleeding, aching heart of him—but this is also the first time Jeff's seen John in weeks. And there's more to it than selfishness—there always is, despite what everyone assumes of him, despite his reputation. There's a need here, a void that no one else will have known to fill. None of the rest of the family were close enough to what happened for John to be able to talk about it with any of them. They won't have known the right questions to ask. Probably John's needed to talk about it. More than that, probably he's needed someone to listen.

Jeff doesn't have a great deal to offer his son, but he can do that much, at the very least.

But not here. It's late afternoon, the end of the work day, and there'll be people returning home, sooner than later. Kyrano will be bringing Scott and Alan back. This is a conversation his son deserves to have, and he deserves to have it somewhere private, without danger of observation or interruption.

So carefully, tentative, he edges one, then two steps closer to his son, and puts a hand on his shoulder. This place is public, impersonal, and exactly the sort of place where John hates to find himself, when he's feeling vulnerable. It's been a long time since Jeff's really known his boys, but he's at least always known it about John, that he craves privacy above all else. So he's firm, a little more insistent this time, when he makes the suggestion, "Let's go upstairs."

"It's Alan's place, I shouldn't—"

"There's supposed to be a little garden on the roof. I haven't seen it yet." It's a lie, Jeff's been over every relevant inch of the building, including the tiny scrap of artificial green space affixed to the top. It's not much, but it'll be more private than the lobby of the building. "Let's go take a look. Come on, John."

John doesn't agree so much as he gives in, his shoulders falling again as some of the taut, defensive tension in him relaxes somewhat. Jeff thumbs the button to summon the elevator, and remains privately grateful for the fact that John hasn't shrugged out and away from the hand on his shoulder, that he's permitting his father to retain that modicum of comfort in contact, though he steps away as the elevator arrives on the ground floor, and Jeff's hands end up in his pockets again.

The elevator doors have closed and they've ridden in silence for over half the height of the building before John finds his voice again, not that his father had expected him to. He'd expected to have to nudge the conversation along again.

But there must be something of a confessional air about the elevator car, something about the wood paneled walls that summons up some sort of deeply latent catholicism, a generation distant, the long-forgotten faith Jeff had lapsed out of as a younger man than any of his sons. Something has to be the trigger, the reason his son swallows and makes an admission of his own, with his voice breaking even as he does—

"I wish this was your fault. Because then it wouldn't have to be mine."

And in that moment, Jeff realizes that his son, blaming him for what had happened to his partner—is _nothing_ , compared to how it feels to know that his son blames himself. The elevator comes to the top floor and stops, the doors chime and open out onto a rather, charming rooftop garden and the soaring Boston skyline. Neither of them see it.

There's nothing for Jeff to do but reach for his son, then, because John just _breaks_. He starts to cry in a way his father hasn't had three weeks to get used to, but which he has the bedrock of thirty-one (admittedly patchy) years of fatherhood to remember how to deal with. It's just instinct to reach out and pull his son into a tight, insistent hug, and to say a whole litany of things that don't matter, won't help, but which a father still needs to say to his son, when his heart is broken.

 _Shh, I_ _'m here. I know. I know, I'm sorry. I'm here, I love you, I'm so sorry. It's not fair, I know it's not fair. I'm here. You're okay._

It takes a long time for John to recover to the point that he can start to get his breath back. By the time he does, Jeff's got him sat down on a bench nearer to the garden's center, near a burbling water feature with koi and a fountain, to cover the raggedness of his breathing and to give him something to watch while he calms down. White and gold and copper flicker and flash through dark green water. It's cooler on the rooftop than Jeff had expected, and he's glad that his son's still wearing a jacket against the wind and the rather unseasonable chill in the air.

But the cold isn't the reason that John shivers bodily, and wraps his arms tight around his chest, shaking his head. Jeff sits next to him, and his hand hasn't left his son's shoulder, except to rub gently up and down his back. The other rests on his knee, gives a reassuring squeeze as John coughs and sniffles and rubs at his eyes, and then coughs again. He shakes his head and his voice is raw as he tries to tell his father, "I'm the worst thing that ever happened to her."

"That's not true, John. She wouldn't have thought so."

John just shakes his head again, despairing. "I wish I'd never known her. I wish she'd never found me. I never should've asked her to stay. I should've known I couldn't keep her safe. I never should've made her feel like she owed me anything. Every time something bad happened to her, it was because she thought she had to save _me_. I'm not _worth_ losing her, I'm _nothing_ compared to what she was. She was _important_ —she was _so important_. There'd never been anything like her before. She was new and she was alone and she…sh-she…"

John's already breaking down again as his voice runs out on him, but what should be said next is just so obvious that Jeff can't help but say it, softly and with his head bowed close, so that it sounds like a secret between them—

"She loved you."

That's just true. But it's true enough that saying it out loud cuts John off, so he has to draw a sharp breath and try to choke back a sob. It doesn't work, and he ends up just wilting further against his father, as Jeff tightens his grip on his son's shaking shoulders and pulls him closer.

She'd loved him so much that she hadn't needed to say so; loved him in a way that was just true and simple and obvious, such that Jeff had just been able to _tell_ , from the very first time he'd met EOS. There'd been a depth of love to her that had gone beyond the bounds of humanity, and broken new ground. Whatever arguments might've been made for consciousness or sentience or anything else, more than anything else Jeff had seen, it was her capacity to love that best defined her right to exist.

But it's that single, implicit truth that his son's going to have the hardest time making sense of, because it's also the reason why EOS made the choice that she did.

He knows enough to move away and give John some space, when his son's shoulders shift slightly and he starts to pull away. Jeff sits quietly on the bench beside his son, counting bricks in the garden pathway, as John presses tears out of his eyes with his palms and pulls a cotton handkerchief out of his pocket, blows his nose. Jeff speaks up again, still just as careful and gentle as the situation merits, "I won't pretend I knew EOS, John. I wish I'd gotten the chance. I only really got to speak to her once—just once, one to one. And we talked about you, how lucky we both were to have you in common. She said it outright, _you_ meant more to her than anything had before. And speaking as one person who loves you, son, there was nothing more obvious about EOS than the fact that she did, too."

"Yeah." Still short and clipped, emotion making John sound more terse than he means to. But he takes a few more moments to collect himself and there's a raw, unmistakable honesty in him, when he says, "I loved her, too. I never even said so. I wish I had told her."

"John, I promise, she knew."

John coughs at that, and then, hollowly, "I still should have said. I can…I can still hear all the things she would've said to me. Just when I'm alone. A-and sometimes—if I don't think about it, sometimes I can forget she's gone….but it only makes it worse when I have to remember. Dad, I don't know what I'm supposed to _do_ without her. I can't do it. I don't know how to be alone like this. I'm…I'm never gonna be okay again. I don't _want_ to be, how could I? I don't deserve that. This is _never_ going to get better."

"No. It won't."

Jeff knows his son too well and loves him too much to lie to him about that. He knows, maybe better than anyone else will, just what his son is going through. But—in just the same way as he knows that John won't be able to believe it yet—Jeff knows that it isn't forever.

He puts a hand on John's shoulder again, and goes on, "But you learn to live with it. It doesn't get better, but it starts to be different. One day it'll be something entirely new. One day you'll go to bed, and realize you went the whole day without thinking of her. Or you'll wake up, and the first thing you think of won't be the fact that she's not there. And that's a whole new kind of grief. You'll hate yourself a little bit, when that day comes—but then you'll remember; she loved you most when you were happy. She would've wanted you to be happy. And that's when you'll start trying to find a way to be happy again."

John doesn't answer, because John probably doesn't believe him, and he's right not to. His father wants to make the promise that one day things won't be so bad as they are now—but it would require a different kind of faith than what his son's capable of, right now. It's true for a different version of his son than exists right now. And that's just what this is.

Jeff clears his throat and the hand he'd laid on John's shoulder comes up, gently strokes his son's hair, just the same colour as his mother's, in the late afternoon light of the sun. "Until then, I hope you can remember that I love you. And your brothers love you. And your grandmother and Kayo and Kyrano, Penelope and Brains—everyone wants you to know, you're not alone in this. You're loved. And we'll all do everything we can to make sure you remember that's true, John."

John doesn't respond immediately. Eventually, maybe for lack of anything else _to_ say, John's only answer is a quiet, "Thank you."

"I hope it helps."

Silence falls between them once again, but of a slightly different tone than the last time. Jeff lets it pass It was always something between his son and his soulmate, the qualities of particular silences. This one stretches out over a long minute, and on into two. The city sounds far away and distant, a shadow falls across the rooftop as a cloud passes in front of the sun. He finds himself thinking of EOS, and the things he's promised his son were true about her, not because he'd known them any better, but only because John needed to be told.

For having known her for only three days, when his son had known her for only three months, after three years of absence, what had always seemed most amazing about EOS was how much she'd reminded Jeff of his son, like the most essential parts of his soul, mirrored into existence. How everything about her had been so carefully crafted, calculated and chosen, how nothing she'd ever done had been without purpose. How her last act had just as much meaning as her last words; a gesture of incredible, perfect faith and trust. One day, Jeff hopes, he'll be the one to explain it to his son.

He doesn't know for certain what the last thing she'd said to John was, but it's not as though it's hard to guess. For his own part, as he looks over at his son again, he has her last words seared into his memory, the last thing she'd asked of him.

The wind comes up just slightly, and the shift of the breeze catches John's copper gold hair, has him look up, out over the edge of the rooftop and towards the city skyline beyond. His eyes are still wet and red-rimmed, the pale blue of them still seems to be the exact colour that sadness would be, the sky on a morning just before the clouds start to gather. He still has his handkerchief twisted up in his right hand, and the other is balled into a fist, resting on his knee. Looking at him, it's impossible not to see the hardship and the heartbreak, and to know that he has a long, lonely road ahead.

And John's father hears a tiny silver voice in the back of his mind, sweet and sad and hopeful, asking for the last and only thing she could have wanted, at the end.

 _Look after my Thunderbird._

And as best as he can, he will.


	23. author's note

There is an epilogue forthcoming. Thanks everyone for reading thus far, and I hope the story has come to a satisfying (if bittersweet) ending. The next 20k words or so will deal with the next year of John's life. I hope you'll all bear with me while I take a bit of a breather, I hope to have this story wrapped up completely within the next few months, I just need a bit of a break.


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